Still, it was clear that Mr Deane was kindly disposed toward the Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who was come home for the Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself against Maggie’s darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucy’s anxious, pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane more prompt in finding Tom a temporary place in the warehouse, and in putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and calculation. That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his father must be a bankrupt, after all; at least, the creditors must be asked to take less than their due, which to Tom’s untechnical mind was the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to have “lost his property,” but to have “failed,”—the word that carried the worst obloquy to Tom’s mind. For when the defendant’s claim for costs had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr Gore, and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; “not more than ten or twelve shillings in the pound,” predicted Mr Deane, in a decided tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding liquid, leaving a continual smart. He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in the unpleasant newness of his position,—suddenly transported from the easy carpeted _ennui_ of study-hours at Mr Stelling’s, and the busy idleness of castle-building in a “last half” at school, to the companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the world was a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without one’s tea in order to stay in St Ogg’s and have an evening lesson from a one-armed elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Tom’s young pink-and-white face had its colours very much deadened by the time he took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger to his supper. No wonder he was a little cross if his mother or Maggie spoke to him.