`O Tom - dear, dear Tom, dont fret too much - try and bear it well.

Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and said, `I shall go home with you Maggie? Didnt my father say I was to go?

`Yes, dear Tom, said Maggie, looking up at him with trembling.

Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Tom. A vague idea of going to prison as a consequence of debt, was the shape his fears had begun to take.

`Hes at home, said Maggie, finding it easier to reply to that question. `But, she added, after a pause, `not himself... . He fell off his horse... . He has known nobody but me ever since... . He seems to have lost his senses... . O, father, father... .

Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step, ready to set out, when Mrs Stelling came with a little basket, which she hung on Maggies arm, saying, `Do remember to eat something on the way, dear. Maggies heart went out towards this woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow - that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.

`Why, how is it youre come so early this cold morning, Maggie? Did you come in the gig? said Tom, as she backed towards the sofa and drew him to her side.

Maggies lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had done. The two poor things clung closer to each other - both trembling - the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.

Mr Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man: he foresaw a probable money loss for himself, but this had no appreciable share in his feeling while he looked with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom youth and sorrow had begun together. When he knew how Maggie had come and how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their departure, only whispering something to Mrs Stelling, who had followed him, and who immediately left the room.

Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. `Wait a minute, Maggie, he said. `I must speak to Mr九_九_藏_書 Stelling, and then well go.

`Wheres my father? he said, impatiently. `Tell me, Maggie.

`My father will have to pay a good deal of money, then?

As for Toms school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape and water-colours in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature; and that passage was not entirely without result besides the possession of the books. Toms ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great many words and phrases which are understood to be signs of an educated condition, and though he had never really applied his mind to any one of his lessons, the lessons had left a deposit of vague, fragmentary ineffectual notions. Mr Tulliver, seeing signs of acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism, thought it was probably all right with Toms education: he observed, indeed, that there were no maps, and not enough `summing, but he made no formal complaint to Mr Stelling. It was a puzzling business, this schooling; and if he took Tom away, where could he send him with better effect?

He thought he must go to the study where the pupils were, but on his way he met Mr Stelling, who had heard from his wife that Maggie appeared to be in trouble when she asked for her brother, and, now that he thought the brother and sister had been alone long enough, was coming to inquire and offer his sympathy.

`Please, sir, I must go home, Tom said abruptly, as he met Mr Stelling in the passage. `I must go back with my sister directly. My fathers lost his law-suit - hes lost all his property - and hes very ill.

With these last words Maggies sobs burst forth with the more violence for the previous struggle against them. Tom felt that pressure of the heart which forbids tears: he had no distinct vision of their troubles as Maggie had, who had been at home: he only felt the crushing weight of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she sobbhttps://read.99csw.comed, but his face looked rigid and tearless - his eyes blank - as if a black curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path.

But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly: a single thought had acted on her like a startling sound.

Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks - a fact which did not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest their affection in unnecessary letters - when to his great surprise on the morning of a dark cold day near the end of November, he was told, soon after entering the study at nine oclock, that his sister was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs Stelling who had come into the study to tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.

The Golden Gates Are Passed

Anxiety about the future had never entered Toms mind. His father had always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful, confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon. Tom had never dreamed that his father would `fail: that was a form of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace, and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought up in. He knew there were people in St Oggs who made a show without money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by his own friends with contempt and reprobation: he had a strong belief, which was a life-long habit, and required no definite evidence to rest on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and since his education at Mr Stellings had given him a more expensive view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would make a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and other accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any of his contemporaries at St Oggs, who might consider themselves a grade above him in society, because their fathers were professional men or had large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and head-shaking of his aunts and uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him except to make him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable society: he had heard them find fault in much the same way as along as he could remember. His father knew better than they did.

`Well, it cant be九九藏書 helped, said Tom, bravely, not translating the loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. `But my fathers very much vexed, I dare say? he added, looking at Maggie, and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way of taking things.

`Yes, said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller speech by Toms freedom from apprehension, she said loudly and rapidly, as if the words would burst from her, `O Tom, he will lose the mill and the land, and everything. He will have nothing left.

`Yes, said Maggie, rather faintly.

`But how is it youre not at school? The holidays have not begun yet?

`My father hasnt lost? said Tom, hastily, springing from the sofa, and standing before Maggie with his hands suddenly thrust in his pockets.

Toms eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her before he turned pale and trembled visibly. He said nothing, but sat down on the sofa again, looking vaguely out of the opposite window.

`And ... and ... poor father ...

`Isnt my father well? said Tom, rather anxiously.

`We must set out, Tom - we must not stay - father will miss me - we must be at the turnpike at ten to meet the coach. She said this with hasty decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize her bonnet.

The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on the distant road - were soon lost behind the projecting hedgerow.

SO Tom went on even to the fifth half year - till he was turned sixteen - at Kings Lorton, while Maggie was growing, with a rapidity which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firnisss boarding school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with cousin Lucy for her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had always sent her love to Philip and asked many questions about him which were answered by brief sentences about Toms toothache, and a turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross: they were no longer very good friends, she perceived, and when she reminded Tom that he ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his foot was bad, he answered, `Well, it isnt my fault: I dont do anything to him. She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of their school life: in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the seaside, and at Christmas she could only m九-九-藏-書eet him at long intervals in the streets of St Oggs. When they did meet, she remembered her promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and Philip would not expect it. The promise was void like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood: void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach - impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed. But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was acting against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness, that they were not likely ever to have any intimacy with Philip again: the very name of Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard him say that if that crookbacked son lived to inherit his fathers ill-gotten gains, there would be a curse upon him. `Have as little to do with him at school as you can, my lad, he said to Tom; and the command was obeyed the more easily because Mr Stelling by this time had two additional pupils; for though this gentlemans rise in the world was not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his extemporaneous eloquence had expected for a preacher whose voice demanded so wide a sphere, he had yet enough of growing prosperity to enable him to increase his expenditure in continued disproportion to his income.

`Father wanted me at home, said Maggie, with a slight trembling of the lip. `I came home three or four days ago.

Mr Stelling put his hand on Toms shoulder and said, `God bless you, my boy: let me know how you get on. Then he pressed Maggies hand; but there were no audible good-bys. Tom had so often thought how joyful he should be the day he left school `for good! And now his school years seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.

The down had come on Toms lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had been hitherto only the reproduction in changed forms of the boyish dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with a violent shock.

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at Kings Lorton, the years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him returning from Mr Jacobs Academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking w九九藏書ithout more shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride: he wore his tailed coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down on his lip with eager impatience looking every day at his virgin razor, with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip had already left - at the Autumn quarter - that he might go to the South for the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change helped to give Tom the unsettled, exulting feeling that usually belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter too, there was some hope of his fathers lawsuit being decided: that made the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had gathered his view of the case from his fathers conversation, had no doubt that Pivart would be beaten.

Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Then he said--

Maggie too was tall now, with braided and coiled hair: she was almost as tall as Tom, though she was only thirteen; and she really looked older than he did at that moment. She had thrown off her bonnet, her heavy braids were pushed back from her forehead as if it would not bear that extra load, and her young face had a strangely worn look as her eyes turned anxiously towards the door. When Tom entered, she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round his neck and kissed him earnestly. He was used to various moods of hers, and felt no alarm at the unusual seriousness of her greeting.

Maggie was frightened at Toms pale, trembling silence. There was something else to tell him - something worse. She threw her arms round him at last, and said, with a half sob,

They had gone forth together into their new life of sorrow, and they would never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered cares. They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them.

`No, Tom, father didnt wish it, said Maggie, her anxiety about his feeling helping her to master her agitation: - What would he do when she told him all? `But mother wants you to come - poor mother - she cries so. O Tom, its very dreadful at home.

`No, I came by the coach - Ive walked from the turnpike.

`Not quite, said Maggie. `Hes very unhappy, Tom. The lawsuit is ended, and I came to tell you, because I thought it would be better for you to know it before you came home, and I didnt like only to send you a letter.