Askern’s done with Women Jumpers Tom’s foot.”
When their father came the second time, Maggie said to him, “Oh, father, Philip Wakem is so very good to Tom; he is such a clever boy, and I do love him. And you love him too, Tom, don’t you? Say you love him,” she added entreatingly.
Tom colored a little as he looked at his father, and said: “I sha’n’t be friends with him when I leave school, father; but we’ve made it up now, since my foot has been bad, and he’s taught me to play at draughts, and I can beat him.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Tulliver, “if he’s good to you, try and make him amends, and be good to him. He’s a poor crooked creature, and takes after his dead mother. But don’t you be getting too thick with him; he’s got his father’s blood in him too. Ay, ay, the gray colt may chance to kick like his black sire.”
The jarring natures of the two boys effected what Mr. Tulliver’s admonition alone might have failed to effect; in spite of Philip’s new kindness, and Tom’s answering regard in this time of his trouble, they never became close friends. When Maggie was gone, and when Tom by-and-by began to walk about as usual, the friendly warmth that had been kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left them in their old relation to each other. Philip was often peevish and contemptuous; and Tom’s more specific and kindly impressions gradually melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward him as a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue. If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of Unisex transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.
Chapter VII: The Golden Gates Are Passed
So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year — Dame till he was turned sixteen — at King’s Lorton, while Maggie was growing with a rapidity which her aunts considered Barn highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss’s boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with cousin Lucy for her companion. In her Vans Hoodies & Sweatshirts Men early Converse American Flag letters to Tom she had always sent her love to Philip, and asked many questions about him, which were answered by brief sentences about Tom’s toothache, and a turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that Philip was as queer as ever again, Converse All Star and often cross. They were no longer very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded Tom that he ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his foot was bad, he answered: “Well, it isn’t my fault; I don’t do anything to him.” She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of their school-life; in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at Vans T-Shirts & Vests Men long intervals in the street of St. Ogg’s. When they Adidas NEO 10K did meet, she remembered her promise to Converse All Star Platform kiss him, but, Converse Classic All Star as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the Women Blouses question, and Plinks:
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