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'Why! Why, look here!" She pointed to the calendar, and he saw, surrounding the big black number "21", hundreds of little crosses in black-lead. "Oh, kisses for my birthday," he laughed. "How did you know?" "Yes, you want to know, don't you?" Fanny mocked, hugely delighted. "There's one from everybody except Lady Clara and two from some. But I shan't tell you how many I put."
Graphite, plumbago, or, as it is more commonly called, black-lead, which, we may say in passing, has nothing of lead about it at all, is best known in the shape of that very useful and cosmopolitan article, the black-lead pencil. This is even purer carbon than anthracite, not more than 5 per cent. of ash and other impurities being present.
For when she returned for the night her father was often out, and the house wanted the cheerful look it had had in the days when money was never wanted to purchase soap and brushes, black-lead and pipe-clay. It was dingy and comfortless; for, of course, there was not even the dumb familiar home-friend, a fire. And Margaret, too, was now very often from home, singing at some of those grand places.
Both sexes are of a very dark colour, but not black; nor have they the least characteristic of the negro about them. They make themselves blacker than they really are, by painting their faces with a pigment of the colour of black-lead. They also use another sort which is red, and a third sort brown, or a colour between red and black.
The unwonted lines which momentary passion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and open brow, gradually melted away, as his young friend spoke, like the marks of a black-lead pencil beneath the softening influence of india-rubber. His countenance had resumed its usual benign expression, ere he concluded. 'I have been hasty, said Mr. Pickwick, 'very hasty. Tupman; your hand.
It is well-known by its grey metallic lustre; the chemist uses it mixed with fire-clay to make his crucibles; the engineer uses it, finely powdered, to lubricate his machinery; the house-keeper uses it to "black-lead" her stoves to prevent them from rusting.
Then they'll be twisted up all the same shape and put in this 'ere paper bag, which I shall 'old as each man draws. The chap that draws the paper with the figger on it wins." He tore up twenty-three bits o' paper all about the same size, and then with a black-lead pencil 'e put the numbers on, while everybody leaned over 'im to see fair play.
They had just finished their meal, and were still sitting, no one speaking, as they all felt somewhat tired, when Walter, hearing a whistle or chirp close behind him, turned his head and saw standing not far off a large bird of dark plumage, or rather with feathers, for he saw no wings, with a helmet-like protuberance at the top of its head resembling mother-of-pearl darkened with black-lead.
"Diamonds," he began and as he spoke his voice lost its faint flavour of the tramp and assumed something of the easy tone of an educated man are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallises out, not as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds.
Every thing indicates poverty; but order and neatness preside over the room. The curtains of the little bed are white as snow, the stove is polished with black-lead till it shines, and the floor is sanded in Flemish style. Mignonette and violets bloom in a box on the window-sill, and a bird chirps in its cage above them.
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