nd it was not long before Mrs.
Tulliver was in the chaise, looking anxiously at the most distant point
before her. What the father would say if Maggie was lost, was a question
that predominated over every other.

VI

Maggie's intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Tom had
imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy
had walked away, was not so simple as that of going home. No! she would
run away and go to the gypsies, and Tom should never see her any more.
That was by no means a new idea to Maggie; she had been so often told
she was like a gypsy, and "half wild," that when she was miserable it
seemed to her the only way of escaping opprobrium, and being entirely in
harmony with circumstances, would be to live in a little brown tent on
the commons; the gypsies, she considered, would gladly receive her and
pay her much respect on account of her superior knowledge. She had once
mentioned her views on this point to Tom, and suggested that he should
stain his face brown, and they should run away together; but Tom
rejected the scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves,
and hardly got anything to eat, and had nothing to drive but a donkey.
To-day, however, Maggie thought her misery had reached a pitch at which
gypsydom was her only refuge, and she rose from her seat on the roots of
the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life; she
would run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where there
would certainly be gypsies; and cruel Tom, and the rest of her relations
who found fault with her, should never see her any more. She thought of
her father as she ran along, but she reconciled herself to the idea of
parting with him, by determining that she would secretly send him a
letter by a small gypsy, who would run away without telling where she
was, and just let him know that she was well and happy, and always loved
him very much.

Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but by the time Tom got to
the pond again she was at the distance of three long fields, and was on
the edge of the lane leading to the highroad. She stopped to pant a
little, reflecting that running away was not a pleasant thing until one
had got quite to the common where the gypsies were, but her resolution
had not abated; she presently passed through the gate into the lane, not
knowing where it would lead her; for it was not this way that they came
from Dorlcote Mill to Garum F