Tom Gillies grows up on Norton Island, two miles and a half from the watering-place of Dixtown, and goes out to his first situation, lodging with Miss Pringle and earning his first wages. The knots of the title are the habits a boy ties for himself-the small lies and idle ways that, as the book warns, grow harder to burst asunder every day-and the ones a friend can help him untie. Mrs. George Gladstone wrote plain instructive tales for the religious publishers, and this one keeps close to ordinary working life. Fifty-eight plates, from Millais to Marianne North, trace the same lesson in landscapes, harbours and boys at work.
