Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. II, 1866.djvu/213

Rh "Yes, yes. There! Now for another placard. And so that was all?"

"All?" said Tommy, turning round and holding the paste-brush in suspense. "Don't you be running too quick. Thinks I, 'I'll meddle no more. I've got a bit o' money—I'll buy a basket, and be a potman. It's a pleasant life. I shall live at publics and see the world, and pick up 'quaintance, and get a chanch penny.' But when I'd turned into the Red Lion, and got myself warm again wi' a drop o' hot, something jumps into my head. Thinks I, Tommy, you've done finely for yourself: you're a rat as has broke up your house to take a journey, and show yourself to a ferret. And then it jumps into my head: I'd once two ferrets as turned on one another, and the little un killed the big un. Says I to the landlady, 'Missis, could you tell me of a lawyer,' says I, 'not very big or fine, but a second size—a pig-potato, like?' 'That I can,' says she; 'there's one now in the bar parlour.' 'Be so kind as bring us together,' says I. And she cries out—I think I hear her now—'Mr Johnson!' And what do you think?"

At this crisis in Tommy's story the grey clouds, which had been gradually thinning, opened sufficiently to let down the sudden moonlight, and