Read "The Caxtons Part XII" by Edward Bulwer-lytton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
My uncle sat on one side the fireplace, my mother on the other; and I, at a small table between them, prepared to note down the results of their conference; for they had met in high council, to assess their joint fortunes, -- determine what should be brought into the common stock and set apart for the Civil List, and what should be laid aside as a Sinking Fund. Now my mother, true woman as she was, had a womanly love of show in her own quiet way, -- of making "a genteel figure" in the eyes of the neighborhood; of seeing that sixpence not only went as far as sixpence ought to go, but that, in the going, it should emit a mild but imposing splendor, -- not, indeed, a gaudy flash, a startling Borealian coruscation, which is scarcely within the modest and placid idiosyncracies of sixpence, -- but a gleam of gentle and benign light, just to show where a sixpence had been, and allow you time to say "Behold! " before
"The jaws of darkness did devour it up. "