The Mill on the Floss

if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?

And I shall want to keep my mother and sister."

thinking more of her boy even than of her husband;

They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had forever closed behind them.

promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided,

"Well, it isn't my fault; I don't do anything to him."

Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for deformed things;

War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a "public."

because you're no better than a girl.

but a boy made of flesh and blood,