That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind, and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking riley's advice about a tutor for Tom. Mr. Stelling's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such an offhand, matter-of-fact way, answering every difficult,slow remark of Mr. Tulliver's with, "I see, my good sir,I see"; "To be sure, to be sure"; "You want your son to be a man who will make his way in the world,"–that Mr. Tulliver was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the every-day affairs of this life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the last sessions, Mr. Tulliver thought the rev. Mr Stelling was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with,–not unlike Wylde, in fact; he had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Mr. Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mistaking brazenness for shrewdness;most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers generally; it was chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a dull fellow. But he told Mr. Tulliver several stories about"Swing" and incendiarism, and asked his advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue,that the miller thought, here was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers, which poor Mr. Tulliver himself did not know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference.It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at all wiser.