Tooting

“ Hammond was likely to marry Lady Victoria, as, of course, you know.”
“Yes, of course; quite so,” jerked out the [92] alderman, deeply ashamed of his ignorance on the point.
The marchioness heaved a sigh.
“I need not ask if the match had your approval, Mr. Dobbin, because I am sure that you, as a friend of Mr. Hammond’s, must see what an advantage such a connection would be to him in his political career.”
“Certainly, your ladyship. Nothing could be better. It would go a long way in Tooting.” ”

“ Tonty paid small heed to their silence; for in his mind was the one great thought that La Salle was alive and might reach the fort at any time. Four years before, his beloved leader had gone from the fort on the Illinois to Canada and across to France; and three years before, he had sailed from France for the mouth of the Mississippi. In all that time, alternating between hope and the gloomy despair which lately had so often fallen upon his soul, Tonty had waited hoping each day for news from his lost chief. ”

“ The terror that comes upon him is so great that the street and the sky swim before his eyes, and he clings to a lamp-post for support.
'O, George!' he groans. 'O, my friend! How will you bear this? Good God! what bitterness there is in life even for those who have not fallen as I have done!'
TOTTIE'S DREAM.
When Tottie was put to bed, it was no wonder that she was haunted by the sweet effigy of old Ben Sparrow, and that his stomach of candied lemon-peel and his head of rich figs and currants presented themselves to her in the most tempting shapes and forms her warm imagination could devise. ”

“ Ben Sparrow goes into the shop to serve, and Tottie is left alone with his effigy. Now it has been mentioned above that Tottie has a vice, and this is it: she is afflicted, not with a raging tooth, but with a tooth so sweet as to weaken her moral sense, so to speak: she is unable to resist temptation when it presents itself to her in the shape of sweetmeats or fruit, and her notions as to the sacredness of such-like property are so loose that (no one being by to see her do it) she helps herself. ”

“ Poor kind Tootles, there is danger in the air for you to-night. Take care lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe. Tootles, the fairy Tink who is bent on mischief this night is looking for a tool, and she thinks you the most easily tricked of the boys. ’Ware Tinker Bell.
Would that he could hear us, but we are not really on the island, and he passes by, biting his knuckles.
Next comes Nibs, the gay and debonair, followed by Slightly, who cuts whistles out of the trees and dances ecstatically to his own tunes. ”

“ If there were only these twelve totem groups—assuming the same number of people in each group—every member of a group would have 11⁄12 of all the women of the tribe to choose from. The existence of the two phratries reduces this number to 6⁄12 or 1⁄2; a man of the totem a can only marry a woman from the groups 1 to 6. With the introduction of the two subclasses the selection sinks to 3⁄12 or 1⁄4; a man of the totem a must limit his marriage choice to the woman of the totems 4, 5, 6. ”

“ Then Toots' parents travelled nearly all the time, and their eldest boy saw a great deal of this busy world. All the soldiers in his father's regiment called him "Button Blue," for when they first saw him he wore little dresses with a good many buttons on them. After that he had a jacket and pants, or, as he called them, "Bocker-nickers." He was a droll little fellow, and always managed to twist words about. The soldiers were very fond of Button, and made him many presents. They taught him games of all kinds, and here we see him showing the major's little daughter how to play cat's cradle. ”

“ Tootle, an incident which had happened not infrequently before. When he entered the room, he saw a young woman seated with her back to him, penning a copy, whilst the children jumped and rioted about her in their usual fashion. The late governess had been a mature person of features rather serviceable than handsome; that her successor was of a different type appeared sufficiently from the fair round head, the gracefully bended neck, the perfect shoulders, the slight, beautiful form. Waymark took his place and waited with some curiosity till she moved. ”

“ They sat on until the light failed and darkness settled upon the veld, closing about them stealthily, and shutting out the immensity of the endless stretch of treeless waste that was all that could be seen from the house, a wide expanse of undulating veld held in the blue hollow of the sky. The darkness crept closer. It shut out the face of each from the other’s view. A small red glow marked where Tottie still held a cigarette between her painted lips, and a larger duller glow shone from the bowl of Lawless’ pipe. ”

“ I won't stand ut a day longer! Mr. Waymark, you're a witness of the outrageous way in which I'm treated in this academy—the way in which I'm treated both by Dr. Tootle and by Mrs. Tootle. You were witness of his insulting behaviour this very afternoon. He openly takes the side of the boys against me; he ridicules my accent; he treats me as no gentleman can treat another, unless one of them's no gentleman at all! And, Mr. Waymark, I won't stand ut!"
Mr. O'Gree's accent was very strong indeed, especially in his present mood. Waymark listened with what gravity he could command. ”

“ LOSSIE helps ever so much," said Toots, one day—"she dusts the chairs in her mother's room, waters the plants, and holds her auntie's worsted. Her auntie is knitting a new rug for the phaeton."
"Little hands should always help," said mamma, "they were made to be useful, and I know Flossie is happier when she is doing something to make home pleasant. One day I heard Flossie saying, "Oh dear! I wish I had something to do. I am tired of my dollies, I don't want to read, and there is no one here for me to play with." I said, "My dear little girl, your mamma has too much to do ”

“ Australian tribes are divided into smaller septs or clans, each taking the name of its totem. Now what is a totem? As a rule it is an animal, either edible and harmless, or dangerous and feared; more rarely the totem is a plant or a force of nature (rain, water) , which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well as its tutelary spirit and protector; it sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous, the totem knows and spares its children. ”

“ The bell rang again, but Tottie took her time. Going to the fireplace, she turned "The Lorelei" to the wall; then slipping the shawl from her shoulders, she draped it carelessly over the plaster statuette of the diving-girl. After which she stepped back, appraised the effect, and went to open the front door to a large, ill-tempered man in a loose sack suit, and a young man, tall and white to ghastliness, whose nostrils quivered and whose mouth was scarcely more than a blue line.
"Good-morning," began Balcome, entering without being asked.
"Won't you step in?" begged Tottie, pointedly. ”

“ To his shame, Tootles, who had bourgeois inclinations, suggested that they should save it against the daily ache of the stomach.
“Never!” said Flick, with a withering look. “We have lived like dead-game sports, and we must end with a bang and not with a trickle.”
“Shake!” said King O’Leary.
“Well, what?” said Tootles glumly. “Oh, you fellows can grin; but I know what’s going to happen to me. That confounded money-eating little flirt of a Pansy will give me the royal shake the moment she gets wise.” When Tootles had a grief or a woe, he confided it to the world. ”

“ He was always in a whirlwind or a calm, and a peaceable, contented, easy-going man Mr Toodle was in either state, who seemed to have made over all his own inheritance of fuming and fretting to the engines with which he was connected, which panted, and gasped, and chafed, and wore themselves out, in a most unsparing manner, while Mr Toodle led a mild and equable life. ”

“ They did land, unmolested of our people, who supposed Tonty had come back; fair-faced men with yellow hair and beards and dressed in shining metal from head to heel. I was at the shore with the others when they came, and heard them speak in this tongue, and call themselves Français. Others of that race followed, and we welcomed and fed them all, even as our fathers had done to Tonty. Some were warriors with swords, and fire-sticks, but with these were also some strange, black-robed men, who sought to tell us of another God, greater than the Sun our fathers worshipped. ”

“ I wrote a poem and showed it to my teacher, but not to my uninterested parents. And when I climbed the stairs at night to my room, I swelled with loneliness and anguish and resentment, and the hot tears came to my eyes as I heard father and mother laughing and talking together and paying no attention to my misery. I could hear Toot, who used to be making all sorts of little presents for me, whistling as he brought in the wood and water, and then "cleaned up" to go to see his Tulula, with never a thought of me. ”

“ One summer when Toots was quite small and not very strong, our family doctor said, 'Couldn't you go and camp out in the pine woods somewhere for a few weeks?' At first it seemed quite impossible to take all the family, but Button Blue was so active and helpful, and the cook said she would like the fun of it, so at last we went, taking care to be near a house where we could get pure water. ”

“ If a totemic clan chooses to wear the image of its totem as a badge, and has no other badge, all is plain sailing. But in British Columbia, as in Central British New Guinea, men, in proportion to their wealth and descent, wear an indefinite number of badges or "crests." "Although referred to by most writers as totems," says Mr. Swanton, speaking of the Haida tribe, "these crests have no proper totemic significance, their use being similar to that of the quarterings in heraldry, to mark the social position of the wearers." ”

“ The woman as lives below us, and is kind to Tottie, is a German, and she bakes the most curious cakes. She has a shop, and makes quite a business of it. Tottie just loves this kind, and to think of the precious child being so unselfish, and denying herself, and she with such a poor appetite too, and sending two of them to Monarch, and here am I spending my whole Sunday away from her, waiting for a chance to give them to the dog. ”

“ Now Tods' Mamma was a singularly charming woman, and every one in Simla knew Tods. Most men had saved him from death on occasions. He was beyond his ayah's control altogether, and perilled his life daily to find out what would happen if you pulled a Mountain Battery mule's tail. He was an utterly fearless young Pagan, about six years old, and the only baby who ever broke the holy calm of the supreme Legislative Council. ”

“ Miss Toland asked dryly. To this Mrs. Toland answered with a merry laugh and a little squeeze of her sister-in-law's arm.
"Oh, you old Sanna!" she chided. "You won't believe that there's a blessed time when Nature just takes the young things by the hand and pushes them right into happiness, whether or no!"
This little talk had taken place just before breakfast, and now Mrs. Toland was reassuring herself of her own position with many a glance at Barbara and at Jim. Barbara seemed serious almost to ungraciousness—that might be a sign. ”

“ Lawless looked hard at her.
“She’s raw,” Tottie explained... “Zulu... only speaks her own tongue. I know a few words, and so we rub along.”
“And her belongings?” Lawless asked. “Has it occurred to you that there’s a nigger husband somewhere? If she makes this place her home she doesn’t live alone here.”
“He hasn’t shown up so far,” Tottie answered comfortably. She touched significantly a holster at her waist. “I’m not scared of niggers, Grit.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve done with this. Van Bleit’s gone—Denzil too... And they’ve taken the horses. ”

“ Let us concentrate, now, our attention on the character of the genuine totem, the totem of the group or kin. It is not adopted by the savages on a dream-warning; each man or woman for himself or herself: nor is it chosen for each child at birth, nor by a diviner, like the nagual, bush-soul, nyarong of Sarawak, or the secret animal friend of each individual Australian. A savage inherits his group totem name. The name of any plant or animal which he may adopt for himself, or have assigned to him as a personal name, by his parents, or, so to speak, god-parents, is not his totem. ”

“ HOW TOOTS WENT TO BED. TOOTS is our baby. He is a queer one too; up early, and always in dread of bed-time. One morning, not long ago, we heard him singing, and on looking for him, found the little rogue in the very middle of our best bed in the guest chamber, where he was playing hand-organ with a long hairpin put through the pretty pillow covers which had just come home from the laundry. There he sat singing a droll medley of "Uncle Ned," "Blessed Desus," and "Down in the Coal Mine." He had been watching two soldiers with a hand-organ, and Toots likes to do everything he sees done. ”

“ Tootles' face was very white, but there was a dignity about him now that had never been there before.
"I did it," he said, reflecting. "When ladies used to come to me in dreams, I said, 'Pretty mother, pretty mother.' But when at last she really came, I shot her." ”