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Updated: May 6, 2025
Mark was at the head of them, and tossed down two glasses in rapid succession. The rest clamoured for the strong drink with eager hands and outstretched arms. "Give me some, give me some," was uttered on all sides. Self reigned paramount. Mr Tankardew's tall form rose high above the edge of the struggling crowd, which he had approached. "Poor things, poor things, poor things!" he said gloomily.
Mr Tankardew lent forward and bent a piercing look at her. She declined, not at all knowing that he was watching her. "Good again; very good, good girl, wise girl, prudent girl," he murmured to himself. The tray now came to Mrs Franklin. She took a glass of sherry. Mr Tankardew's brow clouded. "Ah!" he exclaimed, and moved restlessly on his chair.
And so Mary and her mother were left to their own musings and conjectures, for the farmer and his family made no allusion afterwards to the events of the evening. A Grand piano being carried into Mr Esau Tankardew's! What next! What can the old gentleman want with a grand piano? Most likely he has taken it for a bad debt some tenant sold up. But say what they may, the fact is the same.
While gossip on this unlooked-for transformation was still flying in hot haste about Hopeworth and the neighbourhood, the families both at "The Firs" and "The Shrubbery" were greatly astonished one morning by an invitation to spend an evening at Mr Tankardew's.
It was on one crisp, frosty, cheery January morning that Mr Rothwell, and his son Mark, a young lad of eighteen, were ushered into Mr Tankardew's sitting-room; if that could be properly called a sitting- room, in which nobody seemed ever to sit, to judge by the deep unruffled coating of dust which reposed on every article, the chairs included.
Mr Tankardew's indignation was kindled in a moment. "The wretch! The drunken beast!" he cried; "serve him right if his horse pitches him head foremost into the first ditch with any dirty water in it." On came the contending pair, the man swaying from side to side, but nevertheless marvellously retaining his seat.
Still, it was for sale, and it passed somehow or other into Mr Tankardew's hands, and Mr Tankardew's hands and whole person passed into it; and here he was now with his one old servant, Molly Gilders, a shade more dingy and dilapidated than himself.
They had, however, hardly expected such an invitation; but the reports of the strange changes in progress in Mr Tankardew's dwelling had reached their ears, so that it was evident that he was intending, for some unknown reasons, to break through the reserve and retirement of years, and let a little more light and sociability into the inner recesses of his establishment.
Poor Mary coughed her suppressed laughter into her handkerchief; but as for Mark, he was forced to beat a hasty retreat, and dashed down the stairs like a whirlwind. The way home lay first down a narrow lane, into which they entered about a hundred yards from Mr Tankardew's house.
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