some awe of Tom’s wishes, and since he had the sense of being an “unlucky” father, he had lost some of his old peremptoriness and determination to be master. He took the key of the bureau from his Maillot Équateur Pas CHer pocket, got out the key of the Carolina Hurricanes Barn large chest, and fetched down the tin box — slowly, as if he were trying to defer the moment of a painful parting. Then he seated himself against the table, and opened the box with that little padlock-key which he fingered Maillot Manchester United Pas CHer in his waistcoat pocket in all vacant moments. There they were, the dingy bank-notes and the bright sovereigns, and he counted them out on the table — only a hundred and sixteen pounds in two years, after all the pinching.
“How much do you want, then?” he said, speaking as if the words burnt his lips.
“Suppose I begin with the thirty-six pounds, father?” said Tom.
Mr. Tulliver separated this sum from the rest, and keeping his hand over it, said:
“It’s as much as I can save out o’ my pay in a year.”
“Yes, father; it is such slow work, saving out of the little money we get. And in this way we might double our savings.”
“Ay, my lad,” said the father, keeping his hand on the money, “but you might lose it — you might lose a year o’ my life — and I haven’t got many.”
Tom was silent.
“And you know I wouldn’t pay a dividend with the first hundred, because I wanted to see it all in a lump — and when I see it, I’m sure on’t. If you trust to luck, it’s sure to be against me. It’s Old Harry’s got the luck in his hands; and if I lose one year, I shall never pick it up again; death ‘ull o’ertake me.”
Mr. Tulliver’s voice trembled, and Tom was silent for Detroit Lions Barn a few minutes before he said:
“I’ll give it up, father, since you object to it so strongly.”
But, unwilling to abandon Maillot Valence CF Pas CHer the scheme altogether, he determined to ask his uncle Glegg to venture twenty pounds, on condition of receiving five per cent. of the profits. That was really a very small thing to ask. So when Bob called the next day at the wharf to know the decision, Tom proposed that they should go together to his uncle Glegg’s to open the business; for his diffident pride clung to him, and made him feel that Bobs’ tongue would relieve him from some embarrassment.
Mr. Glegg, at the pleasant hour of four in the afternoon of a hot August day, was naturally counting his wall-fruit to assure himself that the sum total had not varied since yesterday. To him entered Tom, in what appeared to Mr. Glegg very Carolina Hurricanes Drakter questionable companionship — that of a man with a pack on his back — for Bob was equipped for a new journey — and of a huge brindled bull-terrier, Maillot Pérou Pas CHer who walked with a slow, swaying movement from side to side, and glanced from under his eye-lids with a surly indifference which might after all be a cover to the most offensive designs.
Mr. Glegg’s spectacles, which had been assisting him in counting the fruit, made these suspicious details alarmingly evident to him.
“Heigh! heigh! keep that dog back, will you?” he |
