Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife
IN that dark time of December the sale of the household furniture lasted beyond the middle of the sed day. Mr Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of sciousness, to ma an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this livih throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came o his chamber. Mr Turnbull had decided that it would be a less risk to let him remain where he was, than to move him to Lukes cottage, a plan which the good Luke had proposed to Mrs Tulliver, thinking it would be very bad if the master were `to waken up at the noise of the sale; and the wife and children had sat imprisoned in the silent chamber, watg the large prostrate figure on the bed, and tremblihe blank face should suddenly show some respoo the sounds which fell on their own ears with such obstinate, painful repetition. But it was over at last - that time of importunate certainty and eye-straining suspehe sharp sound of a voice almost as metallic as the rap that followed it had ceased; the tramping of footsteps on the gravel had died out. Mrs Tullivers blond face seemed aged ten years by the last thirty hours: the poor womans mind had been busy divining when her favourite things were being knocked down by the terrible hammer, her heart had been fluttering at the thought that first ohing and then another had goo be identified as hers ieful publicity of the Golden Lion; and all the while she had to sit and make no sign of this inward agitation. Such things bring lines in well-rounded faces, and broadereaks of white among the hairs that once looked as if they had been dipped in pure sunshine. Already at three oclock, Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, wharded all people that came to the sale as her personal ehe dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by a tinual low muttering against `folks as came to buy up other folkss things, and made light of `scrazing the tops of mahogany tables over which better folks than themselves had had to - suffer a waste of tissue through evaporation. She was not scrubbing indiscriminately, for there would be further dirt of the same atrocious kind made by people who had still to fetch away their purchases: but she was bent ing the parlour, where that `pipe-smoking pig the bailiff had sat, to su appearance of st fort as could be given to it by liness and the few articles of furniture bought in for the family. Her mistress and the young folks should have their tea in it that night, Kezia was determined.
It was between five and six ocloear the usual teatime, when she came up-stairs and said that Master Tom was wahe person who wanted him was i, and in the first moments, by the imperfect fire and dlelight Tom had not even an indefinite sense of any acquaintah the rather broad-set but active figure, perhaps two years older than himself, that looked at him with a pair of blue eyes set in a disc of freckles, and pulled some curly red locks with a strong iion of respect. A low-ed oilskin-covered hat and a certain shiny deposit of dirt on the rest of the e, as of tables prepared for writing upon, suggested a calling that had to do with boats, but this did not help Toms memory.
`Sarvant, Mr Tom, said he of the red locks, with a smile which seemed to break through