Free The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Page A

the command of
Bob's arms.
    But at this moment Yap, who had been running on before, returned
barking to the scene of action, and saw a favorable opportunity for
biting Bob's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. The
pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation
of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of
his force he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap,
who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new
place, so that Bob, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom,
and, almost throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By this time
Tom was up again, and before Bob had quite recovered his balance
after the act of swinging Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down,
and got his knees firmly on Bob's chest.
    "You give me the halfpenny now," said Tom.
    "Take it," said Bob, sulkily.
    "No, I sha'n't take it; you give it me."
    Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it away from
him on the ground.
    Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise.
    "There the halfpenny lies," he said. "I don't want your
halfpenny; I wouldn't have kept it. But you wanted to cheat; I hate
a cheat. I sha'n't go along with you any more," he added, turning
round homeward, not without casting a regret toward the
rat-catching and other pleasures which he must relinquish along
with Bob's society.
    "You may let it alone, then," Bob called out after him. "I shall
cheat if I like; there's no fun i' playing else; and I know where
there's a goldfinch's nest, but I'll take care
you
don't.
An' you're a nasty fightin' turkey-cock, you are––"
    Tom walked on without looking around, and Yap followed his
example, the cold bath having moderated his passions.
    "Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drowned dog; I wouldn't own
such a dog–
I
wouldn't," said Bob, getting louder, in a
last effort to sustain his defiance. But Tom was not to be provoked
into turning round, and Bob's voice began to falter a little as he
said,–
    "An' I'n gi'en you everything, an' showed you everything, an'
niver wanted nothin' from you. An' there's your horn-handed knife,
then as you gi'en me." Here Bob flung the knife as far as he could
after Tom's retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except
the sense in Bob's mind that there was a terrible void in his lot,
now that knife was gone.
    He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and
disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do not good on the
ground there; it wouldn't vex Tom; and pride or resentment was a
feeble passion in Bob's mind compared with the love of a
pocket-knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he
would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's-horn handle, which
they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his
pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been
sharpened! What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once
tasted a higher existence? No; to throw the handle after the
hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one's
pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a
hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So Bob shuffled back to the
spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new
pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in
opening one blade after the other, and feeling their edge with his
well-hardened thumb. Poor Bob! he was not sensitive on the point of
honor, not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not
have been thought much of by the public opinion of Kennel Yard,
which was the very focus or heart of Bob's world, even if it could
have made itself perceptible there; yet, for all that, he was not
utterly a sneak and a thief as our friend Tom had hastily
decided.
    But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage,
having more than the usual share of boy's justice in him,–the
justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be
hurt, and is