There were some bottles of spirit, standing on a wooden side-table covered with a colored cloth, and some unopened biscuit bags.

At these familiar premonitory signs of a festival, Moses felt tempted to beat a retreat.
He could not think for the moment what was up, but whatever it was he had no doubt the well-to-do persons would supply him with ice.

The char-woman, with brow darkened by soot and gloom, told him that Milly was upstairs, but that her mother had gone across to her own house with the clothes-brush.
Moses's face fell.

When his wife was alive, she had been a link of connection between "The Family" and himself, her cousin having generously employed her as a char-woman.

So Moses knew the import of the clothes-brush.