 firm, rapid step, at this point in his
reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his notice, and who
said to him in a rough, familiar voice -
    »Why, Master Tom, how's your father this morning?« It was a publican of St
Ogg's - one of his father's customers.
    Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, »He's still
very ill, thank you.«
    »Ay, it's been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn't it? - this lawsuit
turning out against him,« said the publican, with a confused beery idea of being
good-natured.
    Tom reddened and passed on: he would have felt it like the handling of a
bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate reference to his
position.
    »That's Tulliver's son,« said the publican to a grocer standing on the
adjacent door-step.
    »Ah!« said the grocer, »I thought I knew his features. He takes after his
mother's family: she was a Dodson. He's a fine, straight youth: what's he been
brought up to?«
    »Oh! to turn up his nose at his father's customers, and be a fine gentleman
- not much else, I think.«
    Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness of the
present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse offices of Guest
&amp; Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. But this was Mr. Deane's
morning at the bank, a clerk told him, with some contempt for his ignorance: Mr.
Deane was not to be found in River Street on a Thursday morning.
    At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room where his uncle was,
immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Deane was auditing accounts; but he
looked up as Tom entered and, putting out his hand, said, »Well, Tom, nothing
fresh the matter at home, I hope? How's your father?«
    »Much the same, thank you, uncle,« said Tom, feeling nervous. »But I want to
speak to you, please, when you're at liberty.«
    »Sit down, sit down,« said Mr. Deane, relapsing into his accounts, in which
he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next half-hour that Tom
began to
