prompt:
Chapter: Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster

The next day, at ten o'clock, Tom was on his way to St. Ogg's, to see
his uncle Deane, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said;
and Tom had made up his mind that his uncle Deane was the right person
to ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great way
of business; he had not the narrow notions of uncle Glegg; and he had
risen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Tom's
ambition.

It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,--one of
those mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. And
Tom was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as the
prospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proud
nature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward his father there
mingled an irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortune
the less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were the
consequences of going to law, his father was really blamable, as his
aunts and uncles had always said he was; and it was a significant
indication of Tom's character, that though he thought his aunts ought
to do something more for his mother, he felt nothing like Maggie's
violent resentment against them for showing no eager tenderness and
generosity. There were no impulses in Tom that led him to expect what
did not present itself to him as a right to be demanded. Why should
people give away their money plentifully to those who had not taken
care of their own money? Tom saw some justice in severity; and all the
more, because he had confidence in himself that he should never
deserve that just severity. It was very hard upon him that he should
be put at this disadvantage in life by his father's want of prudence;
but he was not going to complain and to find fault with people because
they did not make everything easy for him. He would ask no one to help
him, more than to give him work and pay him for it. Poor Tom was not
without his hopes to take refuge in under the chill damp imprisonment
of the December fog, which seemed only like a part of his home
troubles. At sixteen, the mind that has the strongest affinity for
fact cannot escape illusion and self-flattery; and Tom, in sketching
his future, had no other guide in arranging his facts than the
suggestions of his own brave self-reliance. Both Mr. Glegg and Mr.
Deane, he knew, had been very poor once; he did not want to save money
slowly and retire on a moderate fortune like his uncle Glegg, but he
would be like his uncle Deane--get a situation in some great house of
business and rise fast. He had scarcely seen anything of his uncle
Deane for the last three years--the two families had been getting
wider apart; but for this very reason Tom was the more hopeful about
applying to him. His uncle Glegg, he felt sure, would never encourage
any spirited project, but he had a vague imposing idea of the
resources at his uncle Deane's command. He had heard his father say,
long ago, how Deane had made himself so valuable to Guest & Co. that
they were glad enough to offer him a share in the business; that was
what Tom resolved _he_ would do. It was intolerable to think of being
poor and looked down upon all one's life. He would provide for his
mother and sister, and make every one say that he was a man of high
character. He leaped over the years in this way, and, in the haste of
strong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they would be made
up of slow days, hours, and minutes.

By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and was
entering St. Ogg's, he was thinking that he would buy his father's
mill and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house and
live there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he
could keep as many horses and dogs as he liked.

Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in his
reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his
notice, and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:

"Why, Master Tom, how's your father this morning?" It was a publican
of St. Ogg's, one of his father's customers.

Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, "He's
still very ill, thank you."

"Ay, it's been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn't it,--this
lawsuit turning out against him?" said the publican, with a confused,
beery idea of being good-natured.

Tom reddened and passed on; he would have felt it like the handling of
a bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate
reference to his position.

"That's Tulliver's son," said the publican to a grocer standing on the
adjacent door-step.

"Ah!" said the grocer, "I thought I knew his features. He takes after
his mother's family; she was a Dodson. He's a fine, straight youth;
what's he been brought up to?"

"Oh! to turn up his nose at his father's customers, and be a fine
gentleman,--not much else, I think."

Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness
of the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse
offices of Guest & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. But
this was Mr. Deane's morning at the band, a clerk told him, and with
some contempt for his ignorance; Mr. Deane was not to be found in
River Street on a Thursday morning.

At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room where his uncle
was, immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Deane was auditing
accounts; but he looked up as Tom entered, and putting out his hand,
said, "Well, Tom, nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How's your
father?"

"Much the same, thank you, uncle," said Tom, feeling nervous. "But I
want to speak to you, please, when you're at liberty."

"Sit down, sit down," said Mr. Deane, relapsing into his accounts, in
which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next
half-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit in
this way till the bank closed,--there seemed so little tendency toward
a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek,
prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the
bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there
forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other
way of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a
pen and wrote something with a flourish at the end.

"You'll just step up to Torry's now, Mr. Spence, will you?" said Mr.
Deane, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Tom's
ears.

"Well, Tom," said Mr. Deane, when they were alone, turning his
substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his
snuff-box; "what's the business, my boy; what's the business?" Mr.
Deane, who had heard from his wife what had passed the day before,
thought Tom was come to appeal to him for some means of averting the
sale.

"I hope you'll excuse me for troubling you, uncle," said Tom,
coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a
certain proud independence in it; "but I thought you were the best
person to advise me what to do."

"Ah!" said Mr. Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Tom
with new attention, "let us hear."

"I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money,"
said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution.

"A situation?" said Mr. Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff with
elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a most
provoking habit.

"Why, let me see, how old are you?" said Mr. Deane, as he threw
himself backward again.

"Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen," said Tom, hoping his uncle
noticed how much beard he had.

"Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I
think?"

"But I don't think I could get any money at that for a long while,
could I?"

"That's true; but people don't get much money at anything, my boy,
when they're only sixteen. You've had a good deal of schooling,
however; I suppose you're pretty well up in accounts, eh? You
understand book keeping?"

"No," said Tom, rather falteringly. "I was in Practice. But Mr.
Stelling says I write a good hand, uncle. That's my writing," added
Tom, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday.

"Ah! that's good, that's good. But, you see, the best hand in the
world'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if you
know nothing of book-keeping,--nothing of accounts. And a
copying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning at
school, then?"

Mr. Deane had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had
no precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.

"We learned Latin," said Tom, pausing a little between each item, as
if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his
memory,--"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one
week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and
Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had one
day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons;
and there were several other books we either read or learned out
of,--English Poetry, and Horae Paulinae and Blair's Rhetoric, the last
half."

Mr. Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt
in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New
Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they
knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to
speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. But
the presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so
successful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.

About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another
war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well
to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher
classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But,
for what he knew, the Horae Paulinae might be something less neutral. On
the whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion
toward poor Tom.

"Well," he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've had
three years at these things,--you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't
you better take up some line where they'll come in handy?"

Tom colored, and burst out, with new energy:

"I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don't like
Latin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them unless
I went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough for
that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don't want
to be that sort of person. I should like to enter into some business
where I can get on,--a manly business, where I should have to look
after things, and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keep
my mother and sister."

"Ah, young gentleman," said Mr. Deane, with that tendency to repress
youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of
their easiest duties, "that's sooner said than done,--sooner said than
done."

"But didn't _you_ get on in that way, uncle?" said Tom, a little
irritated that Mr. Deane did not enter more rapidly into his views. "I
mean, didn't you rise from one place to another through your abilities
and good conduct?"

"Ay, ay, sir," said Mr. Deane, spreading himself in his chair a
little, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his own
career. "But I'll tell you how I got on. It wasn't by getting astride
a stick and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on it long
enough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn't too fond of my
own back, and I made my master's interest my own. Why, with only
looking into what went on in the mill, I found out how there was a
waste of five hundred a-year that might be hindered. Why, sir, I
hadn't more schooling to begin with than a charity boy; but I saw
pretty soon that I couldn't get on far enough without mastering
accounts, and I learned 'em between working hours, after I'd been
unlading. Look here." Mr. Deane opened a book and pointed to the page.
"I write a good hand enough, and I'll match anybody at all sorts of
reckoning by the head; and I got it all by hard work, and paid for it
out of my own earnings,--often out of my own dinner and supper. And I
looked into the nature of all the things we had to do in the business,
and picked up knowledge as I went about my work, and turned it over in
my head. Why, I'm no mechanic,--I never pretended to be--but I've
thought of a thing or two that the mechanics never thought of, and
it's made a fine difference in our returns. And there isn't an article
shipped or unshipped at our wharf but I know the quality of it. If I
got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want
to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's
where it is."

Mr. Deane tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasm
in his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing this
retrospective survey had on his listener. He had found occasion for
saying the same thing more than once before, and was not distinctly
aware that he had not his port-wine before him.

"Well, uncle," said Tom, with a slight complaint in his tone, "that's
what I should like to do. Can't _I_ get on in the same way?"

"In the same way?" said Mr. Deane, eyeing Tom with quiet deliberation.
"There go two or three questions to that, Master Tom. That depends on
what sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you've been
put into the right mill. But I'll tell you what it is. Your poor
father went the wrong way to work in giving you an education. It
wasn't my business, and I didn't interfere; but it is as I thought it
would be. You've had a sort of learning that's all very well for a
young fellow like our Mr. Stephen Guest, who'll have nothing to do but
sign checks all his life, and may as well have Latin inside his head
as any other sort of stuffing."

"But, uncle," said Tom, earnestly, "I don't see why the Latin need
hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; it
makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but I
always thought they'd never be of any use to me afterward; I didn't
care about them."

"Ay, ay, that's all very well," said Mr. Deane; "but it doesn't alter
what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry off
you, but you'll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it's whitened
your hands and taken the rough work out of you. And what do you know?
Why, you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and not so
much of reckoning as a common shopman. You'll have to begin at a low
round of the ladder, let me tell you, if you mean to get on in life.
It's no use forgetting the education your father's been paying for, if
you don't give yourself a new un."

Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he
would rather die than let them.

"You want me to help you to a situation," Mr. Deane went on; "well,
I've no fault to find with that. I'm willing to do something for you.
But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and
working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get
horseback. Now, you must remember what you are,--you're a lad of
sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There's heaps of your sort,
like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might be
apprenticed to some business,--a chemist's and druggist's perhaps;
your Latin might come in a bit there----"

Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand and said:

"Stop! hear what I've got to say. You don't want to be a 'prentice,--I
know, I know,--you want to make more haste, and you don't want to
stand behind a counter. But if you're a copying-clerk, you'll have to
stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there
isn't much out-look there, and you won't be much wiser at the end of
the year than at the beginning. The world isn't made of pen, ink, and
paper, and if you're to get on in the world, young man, you must know
what the world's made of. Now the best chance for you 'ud be to have a
place on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell of
things, but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound; you'd have to stand
cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You're too
fine a gentleman for that."

Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some
inward struggle before he could reply.

"I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would
put up with what was disagreeable."

"That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn't
only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the mistake
you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your
pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick
yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have
the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way _I_
started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I
wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good
broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the head
of the best firms in St. Ogg's."

Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his
waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.

"Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I
should do for? I should like to set to work at once," said Tom, with a
slight tremor in his voice.

"Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You must
bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, because
you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And
there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because
it remains to be seen whether you're good for anything."

"I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle," said Tom, hurt, as
all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel
no ground for trusting them. "I care about my own credit too much for
that."

"Well done, Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never
refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice.
There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shall
do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then,
you see, he's made good use of his time,--a first-rate calculator,--
can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up
the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonly
knowing in manufactures, that young fellow."

"I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?" said
Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.

"Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But--Ah, Spence, you're back
again. Well Tom, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think,
and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother."

Mr. Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Tom
had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of
Mr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to
call at his uncle Glegg's about the money in the Savings Bank, and by
the time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could not see
very far before him; but going along River Street again, he was
startled, when he was within two yards of the projecting side of a
shop-window, by the words "Dorlcote Mill" in large letters on a
hand-bill, placed as if on purpose to stare at him. It was the
catalogue of the sale to take place the next week; it was a reason for
hurrying faster out of the town.

Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he made his way
homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed a
wrong toward him that his uncle Deane had no confidence in him,--did
not see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Tom himself
was as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Tom Tulliver, was
likely to be held of small account in the world; and for the first
time he felt a sinking of heart under the sense that he really was
very ignorant, and could do very little. Who was that enviable young
man that could tell the cubic contents of things in no time, and make
suggestions about Swedish bark! Tom had been used to be so entirely
satisfied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in a
demonstration, and construing _nunc illas promite vires_ as "now
promise those men"; but now he suddenly felt at a disadvantage,
because he knew less than some one else knew. There must be a world of
things connected with that Swedish bark, which, if he only knew them,
might have helped him to get on. It would have been much easier to
make a figure with a spirited horse and a new saddle.

Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distant
future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth
sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy
bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his
feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and
the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.

"What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?" said Maggie, putting her arm
through Tom's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen
fire. "Did he say he would give you a situation?"

"No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; he
seemed to think I couldn't have a very good situation. I'm too young."

"But didn't he speak kindly, Tom?"

"Kindly? Pooh! what's the use of talking about that? I wouldn't care
about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such a
nuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latin
and things,--not a bit of good to me,--and now my uncle says I must
set about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He
seems to make out I'm good for nothing."

Tom's mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the
fire.

"Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!" said Maggie, who
couldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. "If he had
taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method,
as he did Lucy Bertram, I could teach you, Tom."

"_You_ teach! Yes, I dare say. That's always the tone you take," said
Tom.

"Dear Tom, I was only joking," said Maggie, putting her cheek against
his coat-sleeve.

"But it's always the same, Maggie," said Tom, with the little frown he
put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. "You're always
setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted to
tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you
did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of
my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know
better than any one, but you're almost always wrong. I can judge much
better than you can."

Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his
inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must
take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show
himself dominant. Maggie's cheek flushed and her lip quivered with
conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as
admiration of Tom's firmer and more effective character. She did not
answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were
driven back again, and she said at last:

"You often think I'm conceited, Tom, when I don't mean what I say at
all in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know you
behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to
me, Tom."

With the last words the resentment was rising again.

"No, I'm not harsh," said Tom, with severe decision. "I'm always kind
to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you
must mind what I say."

Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of
tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe
upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed
so hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness,
such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own
thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or
tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did
not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books
was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people
behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did
not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there
for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's
narrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish
dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth,
when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no
superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think
lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future
lightened the blind sufferer's present.

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair
pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull
walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a
creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful
and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after
dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a
blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the
wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a
sense of home in it.

No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the
inward, that painful collisions come of it.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Tom goes to St. Ogg's the next day to see his uncle, Mr. Deane. He plans to ask Mr. Deane to help him find some sort of a job. Tom is depressed, but determined, and hopes that in the future he'll clear his father's name and become a successful man of business. The people in town ask Tom how his father is, or else gossip about him in Tom's earshot. Tom is agitated. He arrives at Guest and Co., Mr. Deane's office, but finds out that Mr. Deane is at the bank. Mr. Deane makes Tom wait half an hour before he'll talk to him. Tom tells Mr. Deane that he wants help finding a job and Mr. Deane starts grilling him about his education and job skills, of which Tom has none. Mr. Deane then gives Tom a very lengthy lecture about how hard the world is and how difficult it is to be successful and get a job. Mr. Deane then tells Tom how he worked his way up from nothing and walked twenty miles in the snow everyday, blah blah blah. He also tells Tom that his education is worthless and that he'll need to learn real world job skills fast. Tom says that he's determined to do what he has to, no matter how unpleasant, and Mr. Deane is pleased to hear it. He tells Tom that he has the right sort of attitude and then sends him away with a vague assurance that he will hire him to the company. Tom goes home feeling very depressed and worried about his job prospects. When he gets home, Maggie cheerfully teases Tom about his schooling and Tom lashes out at her, telling her that she is full of it and needs to mind what he says from now on. Maggie runs off and cries. She feels that the worlds in the novels she reads are so much nicer than the real one and she desperately wonders if there's anything nice in the real world like love and hope.


prompt:
Chapter: 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 second day. Mr. Tulliver, who had
begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability
which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of
spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death
throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest
to his chamber. Mr. Turnbull had decided that it would be a less risk
to let him remain where he was than to remove him to Luke's
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, watching the large prostrate figure on the bed, and
trembling lest the blank face should suddenly show some response to
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 suspense. The 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. Tulliver's blond face seemed aged ten
years by the last thirty hours; the poor woman's mind had been busy
divining when her favorite things were being knocked down by the
terrible hammer; her heart had been fluttering at the thought that
first one thing and then another had gone to be identified as hers in
the hateful 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 broaden the streaks of white among the
hairs that once looked as if they had been dipped in pure sunshine.
Already, at three o'clock, Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered
housemaid, who regarded all people that came to the sale as her
personal enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile
quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by
a continual low muttering against "folks as came to buy up other
folk's 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 on bringing the parlor, where that
"pipe-smoking pig," the bailiff, had sat, to such an appearance of
scant comfort as could be given to it by cleanliness 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 o'clock, near the usual teatime, when she
came upstairs and said that Master Tom was wanted. The person who
wanted him was in the kitchen, and in the first moments, by the
imperfect fire and candle light, Tom had not even an indefinite sense
of any acquaintance with 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 intention of respect. A low-crowned
oilskin-covered hat, and a certain shiny deposit of dirt on the rest
of the costume, as of tablets prepared for writing upon, suggested a
calling that had to do with boats; but this did not help Tom's memory.

"Sarvant, Master Tom," said he of the red locks, with a smile which
seemed to break through a self-imposed air of melancholy. "You don't
know me again, I doubt," he went on, as Tom continued to look at him
inquiringly; "but I'd like to talk to you by yourself a bit, please."

"There's a fire i' the parlor, Master Tom," said Kezia, who objected
to leaving the kitchen in the crisis of toasting.

"Come this way, then," said Tom, wondering if this young fellow
belonged to Guest & Co.'s Wharf, for his imagination ran continually
toward that particular spot; and uncle Deane might any time be sending
for him to say that there was a situation at liberty.

The bright fire in the parlor was the only light that showed the few
chairs, the bureau, the carpetless floor, and the one table--no, not
the _one_ table; there was a second table, in a corner, with a large
Bible and a few other books upon it. It was this new strange bareness
that Tom felt first, before he thought of looking again at the face
which was also lit up by the fire, and which stole a half-shy,
questioning glance at him as the entirely strange voice said:

"Why! you don't remember Bob, then, as you gen the pocket-knife to,
Mr. Tom?"

The rough-handled pocket-knife was taken out in the same moment, and
the largest blade opened by way of irresistible demonstration.

"What! Bob Jakin?" said Tom, not with any cordial delight, for he felt
a little ashamed of that early intimacy symbolized by the
pocket-knife, and was not at all sure that Bob's motives for recalling
it were entirely admirable.

"Ay, ay, Bob Jakin, if Jakin it must be, 'cause there's so many Bobs
as you went arter the squerrils with, that day as I plumped right down
from the bough, and bruised my shins a good un--but I got the squerril
tight for all that, an' a scratter it was. An' this littlish blade's
broke, you see, but I wouldn't hev a new un put in, 'cause they might
be cheatin' me an' givin' me another knife instid, for there isn't
such a blade i' the country,--it's got used to my hand, like. An'
there was niver nobody else gen me nothin' but what I got by my own
sharpness, only you, Mr. Tom; if it wasn't Bill Fawks as gen me the
terrier pup istid o' drowndin't it, an' I had to jaw him a good un
afore he'd give it me."

Bob spoke with a sharp and rather treble volubility, and got through
his long speech with surprising despatch, giving the blade of his
knife an affectionate rub on his sleeve when he had finished.

"Well, Bob," said Tom, with a slight air of patronage, the foregoing
reminscences having disposed him to be as friendly as was becoming,
though there was no part of his acquaintance with Bob that he
remembered better than the cause of their parting quarrel; "is there
anything I can do for you?"

"Why, no, Mr. Tom," answered Bob, shutting up his knife with a click
and returning it to his pocket, where he seemed to be feeling for
something else. "I shouldn't ha' come back upon you now ye're i'
trouble, an' folks say as the master, as I used to frighten the birds
for, an' he flogged me a bit for fun when he catched me eatin' the
turnip, as they say he'll niver lift up his head no more,--I shouldn't
ha' come now to ax you to gi' me another knife 'cause you gen me one
afore. If a chap gives me one black eye, that's enough for me; I
sha'n't ax him for another afore I sarve him out; an' a good turn's
worth as much as a bad un, anyhow. I shall niver grow down'ards again,
Mr. Tom, an' you war the little chap as I liked the best when _I_ war
a little chap, for all you leathered me, and wouldn't look at me
again. There's Dick Brumby, there, I could leather him as much as I'd
a mind; but lors! you get tired o' leatherin' a chap when you can
niver make him see what you want him to shy at. I'n seen chaps as 'ud
stand starin' at a bough till their eyes shot out, afore they'd see as
a bird's tail warn't a leaf. It's poor work goin' wi' such raff. But
you war allays a rare un at shying, Mr. Tom, an' I could trusten to
you for droppin' down wi' your stick in the nick o' time at a runnin'
rat, or a stoat, or that, when I war a-beatin' the bushes."

Bob had drawn out a dirty canvas bag, and would perhaps not have
paused just then if Maggie had not entered the room and darted a look
of surprise and curiosity at him, whereupon he pulled his red locks
again with due respect. But the next moment the sense of the altered
room came upon Maggie with a force that overpowered the thought of
Bob's presence. Her eyes had immediately glanced from him to the place
where the bookcase had hung; there was nothing now but the oblong
unfaded space on the wall, and below it the small table with the Bible
and the few other books.

"Oh, Tom!" she burst out, clasping her hands, "where are the books? I
thought my uncle Glegg said he would buy them. Didn't he? Are those
all they've left us?"

"I suppose so," said Tom, with a sort of desperate indifference. "Why
should they buy many books when they bought so little furniture?"

"Oh, but, Tom," said Maggie, her eyes filling with tears, as she
rushed up to the table to see what books had been rescued. "Our dear
old Pilgrim's Progress that you colored with your little paints; and
that picture of Pilgrim with a mantle on, looking just like a
turtle--oh dear!" Maggie went on, half sobbing as she turned over the
few books, "I thought we should never part with that while we lived;
everything is going away from us; the end of our lives will have
nothing in it like the beginning!"

Maggie turned away from the table and threw herself into a chair, with
the big tears ready to roll down her cheeks, quite blinded to the
presence of Bob, who was looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an
intelligent dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his
comprehension.

"Well, Bob," said Tom, feeling that the subject of the books was
unseasonable, "I suppose you just came to see me because we're in
trouble? That was very good-natured of you."

"I'll tell you how it is, Master Tom," said Bob, beginning to untwist
his canvas bag. "You see, I'n been with a barge this two 'ear; that's
how I'n been gettin' my livin',--if it wasn't when I was tentin' the
furnace, between whiles, at Torry's mill. But a fortni't ago I'd a
rare bit o' luck,--I allays thought I was a lucky chap, for I niver
set a trap but what I catched something; but this wasn't trap, it was
a fire i' Torry's mill, an' I doused it, else it 'ud set th' oil
alight, an' the genelman gen me ten suvreigns; he gen me 'em himself
last week. An' he said first, I was a sperrited chap,--but I knowed
that afore,--but then he outs wi' the ten suvreigns, an' that war
summat new. Here they are, all but one!" Here Bob emptied the canvas
bag on the table. "An' when I'd got 'em, my head was all of a boil
like a kettle o' broth, thinkin' what sort o' life I should take to,
for there war a many trades I'd thought on; for as for the barge, I'm
clean tired out wi't, for it pulls the days out till they're as long
as pigs' chitterlings. An' I thought first I'd ha' ferrets an' dogs,
an' be a rat-catcher; an' then I thought as I should like a bigger way
o' life, as I didn't know so well; for I'n seen to the bottom o'
rat-catching; an' I thought, an' thought, till at last I settled I'd
be a packman,--for they're knowin' fellers, the packmen are,--an' I'd
carry the lightest things I could i' my pack; an' there'd be a use for
a feller's tongue, as is no use neither wi' rats nor barges. An' I
should go about the country far an' wide, an' come round the women wi'
my tongue, an' get my dinner hot at the public,--lors! it 'ud be a
lovely life!"

Bob paused, and then said, with defiant decision, as if resolutely
turning his back on that paradisaic picture:

"But I don't mind about it, not a chip! An' I'n changed one o' the
suvreigns to buy my mother a goose for dinner, an' I'n bought a blue
plush wescoat, an' a sealskin cap,--for if I meant to be a packman,
I'd do it respectable. But I don't mind about it, not a chip! My yead
isn't a turnip, an' I shall p'r'aps have a chance o' dousing another
fire afore long. I'm a lucky chap. So I'll thank you to take the nine
suvreigns, Mr. Tom, and set yoursen up with 'em somehow, if it's true
as the master's broke. They mayn't go fur enough, but they'll help."

Tom was touched keenly enough to forget his pride and suspicion.

"You're a very kind fellow, Bob," he said, coloring, with that little
diffident tremor in his voice which gave a certain charm even to Tom's
pride and severity, "and I sha'n't forget you again, though I didn't
know you this evening. But I can't take the nine sovereigns; I should
be taking your little fortune from you, and they wouldn't do me much
good either."

"Wouldn't they, Mr. Tom?" said Bob, regretfully. "Now don't say so
'cause you think I want 'em. I aren't a poor chap. My mother gets a
good penn'orth wi' picking feathers an' things; an' if she eats
nothin' but bread-an'-water, it runs to fat. An' I'm such a lucky
chap; an' I doubt you aren't quite so lucky, Mr. Tom,--th' old master
isn't, anyhow,--an' so you might take a slice o' my luck, an' no harm
done. Lors! I found a leg o' pork i' the river one day; it had tumbled
out o' one o' them round-sterned Dutchmen, I'll be bound. Come, think
better on it, Mr. Tom, for old 'quinetance' sake, else I shall think
you bear me a grudge."

Bob pushed the sovereigns forward, but before Tom could speak Maggie,
clasping her hands, and looking penitently at Bob, said:

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Bob; I never thought you were so good. Why, I think
you're the kindest person in the world!"

Bob had not been aware of the injurious opinion for which Maggie was
performing an inward act of penitence, but he smiled with pleasure at
this handsome eulogy,--especially from a young lass who, as he
informed his mother that evening, had "such uncommon eyes, they looked
somehow as they made him feel nohow."

"No, indeed Bob, I can't take them," said Tom; "but don't think I feel
your kindness less because I say no. I don't want to take anything
from anybody, but to work my own way. And those sovereigns wouldn't
help me much--they wouldn't really--if I were to take them. Let me
shake hands with you instead."

Tom put out his pink palm, and Bob was not slow to place his hard,
grimy hand within it.

"Let me put the sovereigns in the bag again," said Maggie; "and you'll
come and see us when you've bought your pack, Bob."

"It's like as if I'd come out o' make believe, o' purpose to show 'em
you," said Bob, with an air of discontent, as Maggie gave him the bag
again, "a-taking 'em back i' this way. I _am_ a bit of a Do, you know;
but it isn't that sort o' Do,--it's on'y when a feller's a big rogue,
or a big flat, I like to let him in a bit, that's all."

"Now, don't you be up to any tricks, Bob," said Tom, "else you'll get
transported some day."

"No, no; not me, Mr. Tom," said Bob, with an air of cheerful
confidence. "There's no law again' flea-bites. If I wasn't to take a
fool in now and then, he'd niver get any wiser. But, lors! hev a
suvreign to buy you and Miss summat, on'y for a token--just to match
my pocket-knife."

While Bob was speaking he laid down the sovereign, and resolutely
twisted up his bag again. Tom pushed back the gold, and said, "No,
indeed, Bob; thank you heartily, but I can't take it." And Maggie,
taking it between her fingers, held it up to Bob and said, more
persuasively:

"Not now, but perhaps another time. If ever Tom or my father wants
help that you can give, we'll let you know; won't we, Tom? That's what
you would like,--to have us always depend on you as a friend that we
can go to,--isn't it, Bob?"

"Yes, Miss, and thank you," said Bob, reluctantly taking the money;
"that's what I'd like, anything as you like. An' I wish you good-by,
Miss, and good-luck, Mr. Tom, and thank you for shaking hands wi' me,
_though_ you wouldn't take the money."

Kezia's entrance, with very black looks, to inquire if she shouldn't
bring in the tea now, or whether the toast was to get hardened to a
brick, was a seasonable check on Bob's flux of words, and hastened his
parting bow.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mr. Tulliver's condition has gotten worse and the doctor, Mr. Turnbull, is concerned. The sale of the Tulliver's furniture occurs and Mr. Tulliver is insensible during it. The family stay upstairs during the sale. The maid then comes to get Tom, since he has a visitor downstairs. The visitor is Bob Jakin, who Tom doesn't recognize at first. Tom is sad to see all the family belongings gone, except for the family Bible and a few pieces of furniture. Bob is a little chatterbox and he rambles on about how he liked Tom a bunch when they were kids and still considers him a friend. Maggie comes downstairs now and is dismayed to see all the family belongings gone. She is particularly upset to see that most of the books were sold. Bob rambles on some more and explains that he heard about the Tulliver's troubles and decided to come to help them. Bob works as a packman, which is basically a traveling salesman. He recently earned a good bit of money and he tries to give the Tullivers some of it. Tom and Maggie are deeply touched, but they tell Bob that they really can't take his money. Bob is disappointed, but says that he'll always be their friend and to let him know if they need anything.


prompt:
Chapter: How a Hen Takes to Stratagem

The days passed, and Mr. Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the
medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his
normal condition; the paralytic obstruction was, little by little,
losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful
struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great
snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made
opening.

Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had
only been measured by the doubtful, distant hope which kept count of
the moments within the chamber; but it was measured for them by a
fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly. While
Mr. Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening
toward its moment of most palpable change. The taxing-masters had done
their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the
musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two.
Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal
chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but must
fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent is it in this life
of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably
diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and
we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in
pulsations of unmerited pain.

By the beginning of the second week in January, the bills were out
advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr. Tulliver's
farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and
land, held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The
miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in
that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought
of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed
manner of plans he would carry out when he "got well." The wife and
children were not without hope of an issue that would at least save
Mr. Tulliver from leaving the old spot, and seeking an entirely
strange life. For uncle Deane had been induced to interest himself in
this stage of the business. It would not, he acknowledged, be a bad
speculation for Guest & Co. to buy Dorlcote Mill, and carry on the
business, which was a good one, and might be increased by the addition
of steam power; in which case Tulliver might be retained as manager.
Still, Mr. Deane would say nothing decided about the matter; the fact
that Wakem held the mortgage on the land might put it into his head to
bid for the whole estate, and further, to outbid the cautious firm of
Guest & Co., who did not carry on business on sentimental grounds. Mr.
Deane was obliged to tell Mrs. Tulliver something to that effect, when
he rode over to the mill to inspect the books in company with Mrs.
Glegg; for she had observed that "if Guest & Co. would only think about
it, Mr. Tulliver's father and grandfather had been carrying on
Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-mill of that firm had been so much
as thought of."

Mr. Deane, in reply, doubted whether that was precisely the relation
between the two mills which would determine their value as
investments. As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his
imagination; the good-natured man felt sincere pity for the Tulliver
family, but his money was all locked up in excellent mortgages, and he
could run no risk; that would be unfair to his own relatives; but he
had made up his mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel
waistcoats which he had himself renounced in favor of a more elastic
commodity, and that he would buy Mrs. Tulliver a pound of tea now and
then; it would be a journey which his benevolence delighted in
beforehand, to carry the tea and see her pleasure on being assured it
was the best black.

Still, it was clear that Mr. Deane was kindly disposed toward the
Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who was come home for the
Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself
against Maggie's darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These
fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a
respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucy's anxious,
pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane
more prompt in finding Tom a temporary place in the warehouse, and in
putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and
calculation.

That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there
had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that
his father must be a bankrupt, after all; at least, the creditors must
be asked to take less than their due, which to Tom's untechnical mind
was the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to
have "lost his property," but to have "failed,"--the word that carried
the worst obloquy to Tom's mind. For when the defendant's claim for
costs had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr.
Gore, and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which
would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; "not more
than ten or twelve shillings in the pound," predicted Mr. Deane, in a
decided tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a
scalding liquied, leaving a continual smart.

He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in
the unpleasant newness of his position,--suddenly transported from the
easy carpeted _ennui_ of study-hours at Mr. Stelling's, and the busy
idleness of castle-building in a "last half" at school, to the
companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down
heavy weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the
world was a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without
one's tea in order to stay in St. Ogg's and have an evening lesson
from a one-armed elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad
tobacco. Tom's young pink-and-white face had its colors very much
deadened by the time he took off his hat at home, and sat down with
keen hunger to his supper. No wonder he was a little cross if his
mother or Maggie spoke to him.

But all this while Mrs. Tulliver was brooding over a scheme by which
she, and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and
prevent Wakem from entertaining the purpose of bidding for the mill.
Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous
anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she
might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her
chicks to market; the result could hardly be other than much cackling
and fluttering. Mrs. Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong,
had begun to think she had been too passive in life; and that, if she
had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolution now
and then, it would have been all the better for her and her family.
Nobody, it appeared, had thought of going to speak to Wakem on this
business of the mill; and yet, Mrs. Tulliver reflected, it would have
been quite the shortest method of securing the right end. It would
have been of no use, to be sure, for Mr. Tulliver to go,--even if he
had been able and willing,--for he had been "going to law against
Wakem" and abusing him for the last ten years; Wakem was always likely
to have a spite against him. And now that Mrs. Tulliver had come to
the conclusion that her husband was very much in the wrong to bring
her into this trouble, she was inclined to think that his opinion of
Wakem was wrong too. To be sure, Wakem had "put the bailies in the
house, and sold them up"; but she supposed he did that to please the
man that lent Mr. Tulliver the money, for a lawyer had more folks to
please than one, and he wasn't likely to put Mr. Tulliver, who had
gone to law with him, above everybody else in the world. The attorney
might be a very reasonable man; why not? He had married a Miss Clint,
and at the time Mrs. Tulliver had heard of that marriage, the summer
when she wore her blue satin spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of
Mr. Tulliver, she knew no harm of Wakem. And certainly toward herself,
whom he knew to have been a Miss Dodson, it was out of all possibility
that he could entertain anything but good-will, when it was once
brought home to his observation that she, for her part, had never
wanted to go to law, and indeed was at present disposed to take Mr.
Wakem's view of all subjects rather than her husband's. In fact, if
that attorney saw a respectable matron like herself disposed "to give
him good words," why shouldn't he listen to her representations? For
she would put the matter clearly before him, which had never been done
yet. And he would never go and bid for the mill on purpose to spite
her, an innocent woman, who thought it likely enough that she had
danced with him in their youth at Squire Darleigh's, for at those big
dances she had often and often danced with young men whose names she
had forgotten.

Mrs. Tulliver hid these reasonings in her own bosom; for when she had
thrown out a hint to Mr. Deane and Mr. Glegg that she wouldn't mind
going to speak to Wakem herself, they had said, "No, no, no," and
"Pooh, pooh," and "Let Wakem alone," in the tone of men who were not
likely to give a candid attention to a more definite exposition of her
project; still less dared she mention the plan to Tom and Maggie, for
"the children were always so against everything their mother said";
and Tom, she observed, was almost as much set against Wakem as his
father was. But this unusual concentration of thought naturally gave
Mrs. Tulliver an unusual power of device and determination: and a day
or two before the sale, to be held at the Golden Lion, when there was
no longer any time to be lost, she carried out her plan by a
stratagem. There were pickles in question, a large stock of pickles
and ketchup which Mrs. Tulliver possessed, and which Mr. Hyndmarsh,
the grocer, would certainly purchase if she could transact the
business in a personal interview, so she would walk with Tom to St.
Ogg's that morning; and when Tom urged that she might let the pickles
be at present,--he didn't like her to go about just yet,--she appeared
so hurt at this conduct in her son, contradicting her about pickles
which she had made after the family receipts inherited from his own
grandmother, who had died when his mother was a little girl, that he
gave way, and they walked together until she turned toward Danish
Street, where Mr. Hyndmarsh retailed his grocery, not far from the
offices of Mr. Wakem.

That gentleman was not yet come to his office; would Mrs. Tulliver sit
down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not
long to wait before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow
with an examining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying
deferentially,--a tallish man, with an aquiline nose and abundant
iron-gray hair. You have never seen Mr. Wakem before, and are possibly
wondering whether he was really as eminent a rascal, and as crafty,
bitter an enemy of honest humanity in general, and of Mr. Tulliver in
particular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of
him which we have seen to exist in the miller's mind.

It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any
chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was
liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, which, due
consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of
a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible
to believe that the attorney was not more guilty toward him than an
ingenious machine, which performs its work with much regularity, is
guilty toward the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by
some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into unexpected
mince-meat.

But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his
person; the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other
symbols,--not always easy to read without a key. On an _a priori_ view
of Wakem's aquiline nose, which offended Mr. Tulliver, there was not
more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though
this too along with his nose, might have become fraught with damnatory
meaning when once the rascality was ascertained.

"Mrs. Tulliver, I think?" said Mr. Wakem.

"Yes, sir; Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was."

"Pray be seated. You have some business with me?"

"Well, sir, yes," said Mrs. Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her
own courage, now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and
reflecting that she had not settled with herself how she should begin.
Mr. Wakem felt in his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence.

"I hope, sir," she began at last,--"I hope, sir, you're not a-thinking
as _I_ bear you any ill-will because o' my husband's losing his
lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold,--oh
dear!--for I wasn't brought up in that way. I'm sure you remember my
father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we
allays went to the dances there, the Miss Dodsons,--nobody could be
more looked on,--and justly, for there was four of us, and you're
quite aware as Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Deane are my sisters. And as for
going to law and losing money, and having sales before you're dead, I
never saw anything o' that before I was married, nor for a long while
after. And I'm not to be answerable for my bad luck i' marrying out o'
my own family into one where the goings-on was different. And as for
being drawn in t' abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, _that_ I
niver was, and nobody can say it of me."

Mrs. Tulliver shook her head a little, and looked at the hem of her
pocket-handkerchief.

"I've no doubt of what you say, Mrs. Tulliver," said Mr. Wakem, with
cold politeness. "But you have some question to ask me?"

"Well, sir, yes. But that's what I've said to myself,--I've said you'd
had some nat'ral feeling; and as for my husband, as hasn't been
himself for this two months, I'm not a-defending him, in no way, for
being so hot about th' erigation,--not but what there's worse men, for
he never wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly; and
as for his fieriness and lawing, what could I do? And him struck as if
it was with death when he got the letter as said you'd the hold upo'
the land. But I can't believe but what you'll behave as a gentleman."

"What does all this mean, Mrs. Tulliver?" said Mr. Wakem rather
sharply. "What do you want to ask me?"

"Why, sir, if you'll be so good," said Mrs. Tulliver, starting a
little, and speaking more hurriedly,--"if you'll be so good not to buy
the mill an' the land,--the land wouldn't so much matter, only my
husband ull' be like mad at your having it."

Something like a new thought flashed across Mr. Wakem's face as he
said, "Who told you I meant to buy it?"

"Why, sir, it's none o' my inventing, and I should never ha' thought
of it; for my husband, as ought to know about the law, he allays used
to say as lawyers had never no call to buy anything,--either lands or
houses,--for they allays got 'em into their hands other ways. An' I
should think that 'ud be the way with you, sir; and I niver said as
you'd be the man to do contrairy to that."

"Ah, well, who was it that _did_ say so?" said Wakem, opening his
desk, and moving things about, with the accompaniment of an almost
inaudible whistle.

"Why, sir, it was Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane, as have all the management;
and Mr. Deane thinks as Guest & Co. 'ud buy the mill and let Mr.
Tulliver work it for 'em, if you didn't bid for it and raise the
price. And it 'ud be such a thing for my husband to stay where he is,
if he could get his living: for it was his father's before him, the
mill was, and his grandfather built it, though I wasn't fond o' the
noise of it, when first I was married, for there was no mills in our
family,--not the Dodson's,--and if I'd known as the mills had so much
to do with the law, it wouldn't have been me as 'ud have been the
first Dodson to marry one; but I went into it blindfold, that I did,
erigation and everything."

"What! Guest & Co. would keep the mill in their own hands, I suppose,
and pay your husband wages?"

"Oh dear, sir, it's hard to think of," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, a
little tear making its way, "as my husband should take wage. But it
'ud look more like what used to be, to stay at the mill than to go
anywhere else; and if you'll only think--if you was to bid for the
mill and buy it, my husband might be struck worse than he was before,
and niver get better again as he's getting now."

"Well, but if I bought the mill, and allowed your husband to act as my
manager in the same way, how then?" said Mr. Wakem.

"Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the very mill
stood still to beg and pray of him. For your name's like poison to
him, it's so as never was; and he looks upon it as you've been the
ruin of him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the
road through the meadow,--that's eight year ago, and he's been going
on ever since--as I've allays told him he was wrong----"

"He's a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool!" burst out Mr. Wakem,
forgetting himself.

"Oh dear, sir!" said Mrs. Tulliver, frightened at a result so
different from the one she had fixed her mind on; "I wouldn't wish to
contradict you, but it's like enough he's changed his mind with this
illness,--he's forgot a many things he used to talk about. And you
wouldn't like to have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and
they _do_ say as it's allays unlucky when Dorlcote Mill changes hands,
and the water might all run away, and _then_--not as I'm wishing you
any ill-luck, sir, for I forgot to tell you as I remember your wedding
as if it was yesterday; Mrs. Wakem was a Miss Clint, I know _that;_
and my boy, as there isn't a nicer, handsomer, straighter boy nowhere,
went to school with your son----"

Mr. Wakem rose, opened the door, and called to one of his clerks.

"You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs. Tulliver; I have
business that must be attended to; and I think there is nothing more
necessary to be said."

"But if you _would_ bear it in mind, sir," said Mrs. Tulliver, rising,
"and not run against me and my children; and I'm not denying Mr.
Tulliver's been in the wrong, but he's been punished enough, and
there's worse men, for it's been giving to other folks has been his
fault. He's done nobody any harm but himself and his family,--the
more's the pity,--and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and
think where all my things used to stand."

"Yes, yes, I'll bear it in mind," said Mr. Wakem, hastily, looking
toward the open door.

"And if you'd please not to say as I've been to speak to you, for my
son 'ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would,
and I've trouble enough without being scolded by my children."

Poor Mrs. Tulliver's voice trembled a little, and she could make no
answer to the attorney's "good morning," but curtsied and walked out
in silence.

"Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? Where's the bill?"
said Mr. Wakem to his clerk when they were alone.

"Next Friday is the day,--Friday at six o'clock."

"Oh, just run to Winship's the auctioneer, and see if he's at home. I
have some business for him; ask him to come up."

Although, when Mr. Wakem entered his office that morning, he had had
no intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his mind was already made
up. Mrs. Tulliver had suggested to him several determining motives,
and his mental glance was very rapid; he was one of those men who can
be prompt without being rash, because their motives run in fixed
tracks, and they have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.

To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of inveterate hatred toward
Tulliver that Tulliver had toward him would be like supposing that a
pike and a roach can look at each other from a similar point of view.
The roach necessarily abhors the mode in which the pike gets his
living, and the pike is likely to think nothing further even of the
most indignant roach than that he is excellent good eating; it could
only be when the roach choked him that the pike could entertain a
strong personal animosity. If Mr. Tulliver had ever seriously injured
or thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the
distinction of being a special object of his vindictiveness. But when
Mr. Tulliver called Wakem a rascal at the market dinner-table, the
attorneys' clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business
from him; and if, when Wakem himself happened to be present, some
jocose cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportunity and brandy, made a
thrust at him by alluding to old ladies' wills, he maintained perfect
_sang froid_, and knew quite well that the majority of substantial men
then present were perfectly contented with the fact that "Wakem was
Wakem"; that is to say, a man who always knew the stepping-stones that
would carry him through very muddy bits of practice. A man who had
made a large fortune, had a handsome house among the trees at Tofton,
and decidedly the finest stock of port-wine in the neighborhood of St.
Ogg's, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And
I am not sure that even honest Mr. Tulliver himself, with his general
view of law as a cockpit, might not, under opposite circumstances,
have seen a fine appropriateness in the truth that "Wakem was Wakem";
since I have understood from persons versed in history, that mankind
is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors
when their victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, could be no
obstruction to Wakem; on the contrary, he was a poor devil whom the
lawyer had defeated several times; a hot-tempered fellow, who would
always give you a handle against him. Wakem's conscience was not
uneasy because he had used a few tricks against the miller; why should
he hate that unsuccessful plaintiff, that pitiable, furious bull
entangled in the meshes of a net?

Still, among the various excesses to which human nature is subject,
moralists have never numbered that of being too fond of the people who
openly revile us. The successful Yellow candidate for the borough of
Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the
Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric
against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of
private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity
favored, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favorite
color. Prosperous men take a little vengeance now and then, as they
take a diversion, when it comes easily in their way, and is no
hindrance to business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an
enormous effect in life, running through all degrees of pleasant
infliction, blocking the fit men out of places, and blackening
characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have
been only insignificantly offensive to us reduced in life and
humiliated, without any special effort of ours, is apt to have a
soothing, flattering influence. Providence or some other prince of
this world, it appears, has undertaken the task of retribution for us;
and really, by an agreeable constitution of things, our enemies
somehow _don't_ prosper.

Wakem was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the
uncomplimentary miller; and now Mrs. Tulliver had put the notion into
his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very
thing that would cause Mr. Tulliver the most deadly mortification,--
and a pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of crude malice, but
mingling with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy
humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared
with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your
benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of
revenge which falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not without
an intention of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once
had the pleasure of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St.
Ogg's alms-houses, to the rebuilding of which he had given a large
subscription; and here was an opportunity of providing for another by
making him his own servant. Such things give a completeness to
prosperity, and contribute elements of agreeable consciousness that
are not dreamed of by that short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness
which goes out its way to wreak itself in direct injury. And Tulliver,
with his rough tongue filed by a sense of obligation, would make a
better servant than any chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a
situation. Tulliver was known to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem
was too acute not to believe in the existence of honesty. He was given
too observing individuals, not to judging of them according to maxims,
and no one knew better than he that all men were not like himself.
Besides, he intended to overlook the whole business of land and mill
pretty closely; he was fond of these practical rural matters. But
there were good reasons for purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite apart from
any benevolent vengeance on the miller. It was really a capital
investment; besides, Guest & Co. were going to bid for it. Mr. Guest
and Mr. Wakem were on friendly dining terms, and the attorney liked to
predominate over a ship-owner and mill-owner who was a little too loud
in the town affairs as well as in his table-talk. For Wakem was not a
mere man of business; he was considered a pleasant fellow in the upper
circles of St. Ogg's--chatted amusingly over his port-wine, did a
little amateur farming, and had certainly been an excellent husband
and father; at church, when he went there, he sat under the handsomest
of mural monuments erected to the memory of his wife. Most men would
have married again under his circumstances, but he was said to be more
tender to his deformed son than most men were to their best-shapen
offspring. Not that Mr. Wakem had not other sons beside Philip; but
toward them he held only a chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for
them in a grade of life duly beneath his own. In this fact, indeed,
there lay the clenching motive to the purchase of Dorlcote Mill. While
Mrs. Tulliver was talking, it had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer,
among all the other circumstances of the case, that this purchase
would, in a few years to come, furnish a highly suitable position for
a certain favorite lad whom he meant to bring on in the world.

These were the mental conditions on which Mrs. Tulliver had undertaken
to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact which may receive some
illustration from the remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers
fail in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in the right
quarter, for want of a due acquaintance with the subjectivity of
fishes.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A few more days pass and Mr. Tulliver gradually begins to get better. Meanwhile the Tulliver's land and farm animals are all being sold. Mr. Deane is considering having Guest and Co. buy the family mill, but he hesitates since Wakem still owns the mortgage. The Gleggs look at the Mill, but Mr. Glegg doesn't want to use his money to buy it. Mr. Tulliver is declared bankrupt and Tom's pride smarts at this blow to the family honor. Tom takes an entry position at Guest and Co. and is basically slaving away for minimum wage. Meanwhile, Mrs. Tulliver is scheming. She decides to go see Mr. Wakem to beg him to not throw them out of their house. She feels that Mr. Wakem will be nice to her since this was all her husband's fault and since she used to be a Miss Dodson and everybody loves the Dodsons, apparently. The Dodsons love themselves at any rate. So, Mrs. Tulliver goes to see Mr. Wakem, who is really confused by her visit to his office. Mrs. Tulliver rambles on till Mr. Wakem finally cuts her off and tells her to get to the point already. Mrs. Tulliver finally blurts out that she wants Mr. Wakem to let Guest and Co. purchase the mill so that the Tulllivers can stay there. Mr. Wakem didn't know about the Guest and Co. plans. Uh oh! Mr. Wakem suggests that he buy the mill and let Mr. Tulliver stay on as the manager. Mrs. Tulliver says that's nice but that her husband hates his guts and probably won't agree to work for him. Wakem calls Mr. Tulliver some mean names and Mrs. Tulliver gets worried. She tries talking about Mrs. Wakem to calm him down. Mr. Wakem quickly has Mrs. Tulliver thrown out of his office. He then asks his secretary when the mill is being sold and obviously plans to buy it himself, as he is an evil lawyer. But the narrator breaks in now to give us a very lengthy run down of Mr. Wakem's motives. Wakem isn't evil per se. He's just a rich man who often enjoys messing with poorer people for kicks and giggles. Like Dr. Frankenstein, Wakem buys things and takes a little revenge against his neighbors just because he can. Wakem does have some nice qualities though - he was devoted to his late wife and he is good to his son Philip, despite his deformity. But overall he's kind of a punk. And a soon-to-be mill owner.


prompt:
Chapter: Daylight on the Wreck

It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Tulliver first came
downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the roofs
opposite his window had made him impatiently declare that he would be
caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be more cheery under
this sunshine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of the bareness
below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate, as if it had an
unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and the marks where
well-known objects once had been. The impression on his mind that it
was but yesterday when he received the letter from Mr. Gore was so
continually implied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to him the
idea that many weeks had passed and much had happened since then had
been so soon swept away by recurrent forgetfulness, that even Mr.
Turnbull had begun to despair of preparing him to meet the facts by
previous knowledge. The full sense of the present could only be
imparted gradually by new experience,--not by mere words, which must
remain weaker than the impressions left by the _old_ experience. This
resolution to come downstairs was heard with trembling by the wife and
children. Mrs. Tulliver said Tom must not go to St. Ogg's at the usual
hour, he must wait and see his father downstairs; and Tom complied,
though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The
hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever during the
last few days. For Guest & Co. had not bought the mill; both mill and
land had been knocked down to Wakem, who had been over the premises,
and had laid before Mr. Deane and Mr. Glegg, in Mrs. Tulliver's
presence, his willingness to employ Mr. Tulliver, in case of his
recovery, as a manager of the business. This proposition had
occasioned much family debating. Uncles and aunts were almost
unanimously of opinion that such an offer ought not to be rejected
when there was nothing in the way but a feeling in Mr. Tulliver's
mind, which, as neither aunts nor uncles shared it, was regarded as
entirely unreasonable and childish,--indeed, as a transferring toward
Wakem of that indignation and hatred which Mr. Tulliver ought properly
to have directed against himself for his general quarrelsomeness, and
his special exhibition of it in going to law. Here was an opportunity
for Mr. Tulliver to provide for his wife and daughter without any
assistance from his wife's relations, and without that too evident
descent into pauperism which makes it annoying to respectable people
to meet the degraded member of the family by the wayside. Mr.
Tulliver, Mrs. Glegg considered, must be made to feel, when he came to
his right mind, that he could never humble himself enough; for _that_
had come which she had always foreseen would come of his insolence in
time past "to them as were the best friends he'd got to look to." Mr
Glegg and Mr. Deane were less stern in their views, but they both of
them thought Tulliver had done enough harm by his hot-tempered
crotchets and ought to put them out of the question when a livelihood
was offered him; Wakem showed a right feeling about the matter,--_he_
had no grudge against Tulliver.

Tom had protested against entertaining the proposition. He shouldn't
like his father to be under Wakem; he thought it would look
mean-spirited; but his mother's main distress was the utter
impossibility of ever "turning Mr. Tulliver round about Wakem," or
getting him to hear reason; no, they would all have to go and live in
a pigsty on purpose to spite Wakem, who spoke "so as nobody could be
fairer." Indeed, Mrs. Tulliver's mind was reduced to such confusion by
living in this strange medium of unaccountable sorrow, against which
she continually appealed by asking, "Oh dear, what _have_ I done to
deserve worse than other women?" that Maggie began to suspect her poor
mother's wits were quite going.

"Tom," she said, when they were out of their father's room together,
"we _must_ try to make father understand a little of what has happened
before he goes downstairs. But we must get my mother away. She will
say something that will do harm. Ask Kezia to fetch her down, and keep
her engaged with something in the kitchen."

Kezia was equal to the task. Having declared her intention of staying
till the master could get about again, "wage or no wage," she had
found a certain recompense in keeping a strong hand over her mistress,
scolding her for "moithering" herself, and going about all day without
changing her cap, and looking as if she was "mushed." Altogether, this
time of trouble was rather a Saturnalian time to Kezia; she could
scold her betters with unreproved freedom. On this particular occasion
there were drying clothes to be fetched in; she wished to know if one
pair of hands could do everything in-doors and out, and observed that
_she_ should have thought it would be good for Mrs. Tulliver to put on
her bonnet, and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful piece
of work. Poor Mrs. Tulliver went submissively downstairs; to be
ordered about by a servant was the last remnant of her household
dignities,--she would soon have no servant to scold her. Mr. Tulliver
was resting in his chair a little after the fatigue of dressing, and
Maggie and Tom were seated near him, when Luke entered to ask if he
should help master downstairs.

"Ay, ay, Luke; stop a bit, sit down," said Mr. Tulliver pointing his
stick toward a chair, and looking at him with that pursuant gaze which
convalescent persons often have for those who have tended them,
reminding one of an infant gazing about after its nurse. For Luke had
been a constant night-watcher by his master's bed.

"How's the water now, eh, Luke?" said Mr. Tulliver. "Dix hasn't been
choking you up again, eh?"

"No, sir, it's all right."

"Ay, I thought not; he won't be in a hurry at that again, now Riley's
been to settle him. That was what I said to Riley yesterday--I
said----"

Mr. Tulliver leaned forward, resting his elbows on the armchair, and
looking on the ground as if in search of something, striving after
vanishing images like a man struggling against a doze. Maggie looked
at Tom in mute distress, their father's mind was so far off the
present, which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering
consciousness! Tom was almost ready to rush away, with that impatience
of painful emotion which makes one of the differences between youth
and maiden, man and woman.

"Father," said Maggie, laying her hand on his, "don't you remember
that Mr. Riley is dead?"

"Dead?" said Mr. Tulliver, sharply, looking in her face with a
strange, examining glance.

"Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember hearing you
say you had to pay money for him; and he left his daughters badly off;
one of them is under-teacher at Miss Firniss's, where I've been to
school, you know."

"Ah?" said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her face. But as
soon as Tom began to speak he turned to look at _him_ with the same
inquiring glances, as if he were rather surprised at the presence of
these two young people. Whenever his mind was wandering in the far
past, he fell into this oblivion of their actual faces; they were not
those of the lad and the little wench who belonged to that past.

"It's a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, father," said
Tom. "I remember your talking about it three years ago, before I went
to school at Mr. Stelling's. I've been at school there three years;
don't you remember?"

Mr. Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the childlike
outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from
external impressions.

"Ay, ay," he said, after a minute or two, "I've paid a deal o'
money--I was determined my son should have a good eddication; I'd none
myself, and I've felt the miss of it. And he'll want no other fortin,
that's what I say--if Wakem was to get the better of me again----"

The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after a moment's pause
he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his
side-pocket. Then he turned to Tom, and said in his old sharp way,
"Where have they put Gore's letter?"

It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it
before.

"You know what there is in the letter, father?" said Tom, as he gave
it to him.

"To be sure I do," said Mr. Tulliver, rather angrily. "What o' that?
If Furley can't take to the property, somebody else can; there's
plenty o' people in the world besides Furley. But it's hindering--my
not being well--go and tell 'em to get the horse in the gig, Luke; I
can get down to St. Ogg's well enough--Gore's expecting me."

"No, dear father!" Maggie burst out entreatingly; "it's a very long
while since all that; you've been ill a great many weeks,--more than
two months; everything is changed."

Mr. Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a startled
gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had
often transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with
entire novelty.

"Yes, father," said Tom, in answer to the gaze. "You needn't trouble
your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is
settled about that for the present,--about the mill and the land and
the debts."

"What's settled, then?" said his father, angrily.

"Don't you take on too much bout it, sir," said Luke. "You'd ha' paid
iverybody if you could,--that's what I said to Master Tom,--I said
you'd ha' paid iverybody if you could."

Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men whose
lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in
rank which made his master's downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged,
in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the
family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again
to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds
out of the children's money, were the most ready to his tongue. They
were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master's
bewildered mind.

"Paid everybody?" he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing,
and his eye lighting up. "Why--what--have they made me a _bankrupt?_"

"Oh, father, dear father!" said Maggie, who thought that terrible word
really represented the fact; "bear it well, because we love you; your
children will always love you. Tom will pay them all; he says he will,
when he's a man."

She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trembled too, as
he said, after a few moments:

"Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o'er."

"But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, father," said Tom,
speaking with a great effort.

"Ah, my lad," said Mr. Tulliver, shaking his head slowly, "but what's
broke can never be whole again; it 'ud be your doing, not mine." Then
looking up at him, "You're only sixteen; it's an up-hill fight for
you, but you mustn't throw it at your father; the raskills have been
too many for him. I've given you a good eddication,--that'll start
you."

Something in his throat half choked the last words; the flush, which
had alarmed his children because it had so often preceded a recurrence
of paralysis, had subsided, and his face looked pale and tremulous.
Tom said nothing; he was still struggling against his inclination to
rush away. His father remained quiet a minute or two, but his mind did
not seem to be wandering again.

"Have they sold me up, then?" he said more calmly, as if he were
possessed simply by the desire to know what had happened.

"Everything is sold, father; but we don't know all about the mill and
the land yet," said Tom, anxious to ward off any question leading to
the fact that Wakem was the purchaser.

"You must not be surprised to see the room look very bare downstairs,
father," said Maggie; "but there's your chair and the bureau;
_they're_ not gone."

"Let us go; help me down, Luke,--I'll go and see everything," said Mr.
Tulliver, leaning on his stick, and stretching out his other hand
toward Luke.

"Ay, sir," said Luke, as he gave his arm to his master, "you'll make
up your mind to't a bit better when you've seen iverything; you'll get
used to't. That's what my mother says about her shortness o'
breath,--she says she's made friends wi't now, though she fought
again' it sore when it just come on."

Maggie ran on before to see that all was right in the dreary parlor,
where the fire, dulled by the frosty sunshine, seemed part of the
general shabbiness. She turned her father's chair, and pushed aside
the table to make an easy way for him, and then stood with a beating
heart to see him enter and look round for the first time. Tom advanced
before him, carrying the leg-rest, and stood beside Maggie on the
hearth. Of those two young hearts Tom's suffered the most unmixed
pain, for Maggie, with all her keen susceptibility, yet felt as if the
sorrow made larger room for her love to flow in, and gave
breathing-space to her passionate nature. No true boy feels that; he
would rather go and slay the Nemean lion, or perform any round of
heroic labors, than endure perpetual appeals to his pity, for evils
over which he can make no conquest.

Mr. Tulliver paused just inside the door, resting on Luke, and looking
round him at all the bare places, which for him were filled with the
shadows of departed objects,--the daily companions of his life. His
faculties seemed to be renewing their strength from getting a footing
on this demonstration of the senses.

"Ah!" he said slowly, moving toward his chair, "they've sold me
up--they've sold me up."

Then seating himself, and laying down his stick, while Luke left the
room, he looked round again.

"They've left the big Bible," he said. "It's got everything in,--when
I was born and married; bring it me, Tom."

The quarto Bible was laid open before him at the fly-leaf, and while
he was reading with slowly travelling eyes Mrs. Tulliver entered the
room, but stood in mute surprise to find her husband down already, and
with the great Bible before him.

"Ah," he said, looking at a spot where his finger rested, "my mother
was Margaret Beaton; she died when she was forty-seven,--hers wasn't a
long-lived family; we're our mother's children, Gritty and me are,--we
shall go to our last bed before long."

He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister's birth and
marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to him; then he
suddenly looked up at Tom, and said, in a sharp tone of alarm:

"They haven't come upo' Moss for the money as I lent him, have they?"

"No, father," said Tom; "the note was burnt."

Mr. Tulliver turned his eyes on the page again, and presently said:

"Ah--Elizabeth Dodson--it's eighteen year since I married her----"

"Come next Ladyday," said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to his side and
looking at the page.

Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face.

"Poor Bessy," he said, "you was a pretty lass then,--everybody said
so,--and I used to think you kept your good looks rarely. But you're
sorely aged; don't you bear me ill-will--I meant to do well by you--we
promised one another for better or for worse----"

"But I never thought it 'ud be so for worse as this," said poor Mrs.
Tulliver, with the strange, scared look that had come over her of
late; "and my poor father gave me away--and to come on so all at
once----"

"Oh, mother!" said Maggie, "don't talk in that way."

"No, I know you won't let your poor mother speak--that's been the way
all my life--your father never minded what I said--it 'ud have been o'
no use for me to beg and pray--and it 'ud be no use now, not if I was
to go down o' my hands and knees----"

"Don't say so, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, whose pride, in these first
moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some justice
in his wife's reproach. "It there's anything left as I could do to
make you amends, I wouldn't say you nay."

"Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might keep among my
own sisters,--and me been such a good wife to you, and never crossed
you from week's end to week's end--and they all say so--they say it
'ud be nothing but right, only you're so turned against Wakem."

"Mother," said Tom, severely, "this is not the time to talk about
that."

"Let her be," said Mr. Tulliver. "Say what you mean, Bessy."

"Why, now the mill and the land's all Wakem's, and he's got everything
in his hands, what's the use o' setting your face against him, when he
says you may stay here, and speaks as fair as can be, and says you may
manage the business, and have thirty shillings a-week, and a horse to
ride about to market? And where have we got to put our heads? We must
go into one o' the cottages in the village,--and me and my children
brought down to that,--and all because you must set your mind against
folks till there's no turning you."

Mr. Tulliver had sunk back in his chair trembling.

"You may do as you like wi' me, Bessy," he said, in a low voice; "I've
been the bringing of you to poverty--this world's too many for me--I'm
nought but a bankrupt; it's no use standing up for anything now."

"Father," said Tom, "I don't agree with my mother or my uncles, and I
don't think you ought to submit to be under Wakem. I get a pound
a-week now, and you can find something else to do when you get well."

"Say no more, Tom, say no more; I've had enough for this day. Give me
a kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one another no ill-will; we shall never
be young again--this world's been too many for me."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mr. Tulliver is finally able to come downstairs again, since his health is better. He has some really big memory gaps though, and has no idea how bad his family's current situation is. The doctor, Mr. Turnbull, worries about him ever regaining his memory. Mr. Wakem has bought the mill and the rest of the family regards Mr. Tulliver's hatred of Mr. Wakem as unreasonable. The aunts and uncles feel that Mr. Tulliver has caused enough problems already and ought to just suck it up and deal with Wakem now. Tom wants nothing to do with Wakem, but his mom insists that they need to get his father to accept the situation and work for Wakem now. Mr. Tulliver is still pretty confused and is basically living in the past. The family and Luke gently try to break the news to Mr. Tulliver, who is horrified to learn that he is now bankrupt. Mr. Tulliver wants to go downstairs to see how bad it is. Luke helps him down and he asks to see the family Bible. Mr. Tulliver makes sure that no one has asked Mrs. Moss for money. He then apologizes to Mrs. Tulliver for all the trouble and Mrs. Tulliver lets slip that Wakem now owns the mill. Mr. Tulliver is totally shocked and says they can do whatever they like with him now. He's pretty much beaten down.