to come home and not know Tyskland Drakt Barn anything about it beforehand.”
And the next morning Maggie went, as we have seen. Sitting on the coach on their way home, the brother and sister talked to each other in sad, interrupted whispers.
“They say Mr. Wakem has got a New England Patriots mortgage or something on the land, Tom,” said Maggie. “It was the letter with that news in it that made father ill, they think.”
“I believe that scoundrel’s been planning all along to ruin my father,” said Tom, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite conclusion. “I’ll make him feel for it when I’m a man. Mind you never speak to Philip again.”
“Oh, Tom!” said Maggie, in a tone of sad remonstrance; but she had no spirit to dispute anything then, still less to vex Tom by opposing him.
Chapter II: Mrs. Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods
When the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five hours since she had started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that her father had perhaps missed her, and asked for “the little wench” in vain. She thought of no other change that might have happened.
She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house before Tom; but in the entrance she was startled by a strong smell of tobacco. The parlor door was ajar; that was where the smell came from. It was very strange; could any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her mother there? If so, she must be told that Tom was come. Maggie, after this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening the door when Tom came up, and they both looked into the parlor together.
There was a coarse, dingy man, of whose face Tom had some vague recollection, sitting in his father’s chair, smoking, with a jug and glass beside him.
The truth flashed on Tom’s mind in an instant. To “have the bailiff in the house,” and “to be sold up,” were phrases which he had been used to, even as a Los Angeles Rams little boy; they were part of the disgrace and misery of “failing,” of losing all one’s money, and being ruined — sinking into the condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural this should happen, since his father had lost all his property, and he thought of no more special cause for this particular form of misfortune than the loss of the lawsuit. But the immediate presence of this disgrace was Cincinnati Bengals Hattar so much keener an experience to Tom than Frankrike Drakt Barn the worst form of apprehension, that he felt at this moment as if his real trouble had only just begin; it was a touch on the irritated nerve compared with its spontaneous dull aching.
“How do you do, sir?” said the man, taking the Halpa Miehet Cg Langford Parka pipe out of his mouth, with rough, embarrassed civility. The two young startled faces made him a little uncomfortable.
But Tom turned away hastily without speaking; the sight was New York Giants too hateful. Maggie had not understood the appearance of this stranger, as Tom had. She followed him, whispering: “Who can it be, Tom? What is the matter?” Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger might have something to do with a change in her fa |
