Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series», sayfa 13

“I suppose you can go, then. No, I have no instructions: you know what to say as well as I do. We don’t give way a jot, mind. Oh, and—Tom!” added Jacob, calling him back as he went out.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am intending to raise your salary. From the beginning of next month, you will have a hundred and fifty a-year.”

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Jacob.”

Tom spoke as he in his ready good-nature felt—brightly and gratefully. Nevertheless, a shade of disappointment did cross his mind, for he thought his position in the house ought to be a different one.

“And I am sure it is quite as much as I ought to do for him,” argued Jacob with his conscience. And he put away unpleasant prickings and set to work like a house on fire.

It was one o’clock when Valentine came in. He had an excuse ready for his father: the latter, turning out of the clerks’ room, chanced to see him enter. “He had been down to Tyler’s to see if he could get that money from them.” It was an untruth, for he had stayed all the while at the Bell; and his father noticed that his face was uncommonly flushed. Old Jacob had had his suspicions before; yes, and spoken of them to Valentine: he now motioned him to go before him into the private room.

“You have been drinking, sir!”

“I!—good gracious, no,” returned Valentine, boldly, his blue eyes fearlessly meeting his father’s. “What fancies you do pick up!”

“Valentine, when I was your age I never drank a drop of anything till night, and then it was only a glass of beer with my supper. It seems to me that young men of the present day think they can drink at all hours with impunity.”

“I don’t drink, father.”

“Very well. Take care you do not. It is a habit more easily acquired than left off. Look here: I am going to give you fifty pounds a-year more. Mind you make it do: and do not spend it in waste.”

It was not very long after this that Jacob Chandler had a shock: a few months, or so. During that time he had been growing thinner and weaker, and looked so shrivelled up that there seemed to be nothing left of him. Islip, small place though it was, had a market-day—Friday;—when farmers would drive or walk in and congregate at the Bell. One afternoon, just as the ordinary was over, Jacob went to the inn, as was his general custom: he had always some business or other to transact with the farmers; or, if not, something to say. His visit to them over, he said good-day and left: but the next minute he turned back, having forgotten something. Some words fell on his ear as he opened the door.

“Ay. He is not long for this world.”

They were spoken by old Farmer Blake—a big, burly, kind-hearted man. And Jacob Chandler felt as certain that they were meant to apply to himself as though his name had been mentioned. He went into a cold shiver, and shut the door again without entering.

Was it true, he asked himself, as he walked across the street to his office: was it indeed a fact that he was slowly dying? A great fear fell upon him: a dread of death. What, leave all this beautiful sunshine, this bright world in which he was so busy, and pass into the cold dark grave! Jacob turned sick at the thought.

It was true that he had long been ailing; but not with any specific ailment. He could not deny that he was now more like a shadow than a man, or that every day seemed to bring him less of strength. Passing into his dining-parlour instead of into his private business room, he drank two glasses of wine off at once, and it seemed to revive him. He was a very abstemious man in general.

Well, if Farmer Blake did say it—stupid old idiot!—it was not obliged to be true, reflected Jacob then. People judged by his spareness: he wished he could get a little fatter. And so he reasoned and persuaded himself out of his fears, and grew sufficiently reassured to transact his business, always pressing on a Friday.

But that same evening, Jacob Chandler drove to North Villa in his gig, telling his wife he should sleep there for a week or two, for the sake of the fresh air. And the next morning, before he went to Islip, he sent for the doctor—Cole.

“People are saying you won’t live!” repeated Cole, having listened to Jacob’s confidential communication. “I don’t see why you should not live. Let’s examine you a bit. You should not take up fancies.”

Cole could find nothing particular the matter with him. He recommended him rest from business, change of air, and a generous diet. “Try it for a month,” said he.

“I can’t try it—except the diet,” returned Jacob. “It’s all very well for you to talk about rest from business, Cole, but how am I to take rest? My business could not get on without me. Business is a pleasure to me; it’s not a pain.”

“You want rest from it all the same,” said Cole. “You have stuck closely to it this many a year.”

“My mother died without apparent cause,” said Jacob, dreamily. “She seemed just to drift out of life. About my age, too.”

“That’s no reason why you should,” argued Cole.

Well, they went on, talking at one another; but nothing came of it. And Cole left, saying he would send him in some tonics to take.

By the evening it was known all over the place that Jacob Chandler was ill and had sent for Cole. People talked of it the next morning as they went to church. Jacob appeared, looking much as usual, and sat down in his pew. The next to come in was Mrs. Cramp; who walked over to our church sometimes. She stayed to dine with the Lexoms, and went to call at North Villa after dinner; finding Mrs. Jacob and the rest of them at dessert with a guest or two. Jacob was somewhere in the garden.

Mrs. Cramp found him in the latticed arbour, and sat down opposite to him, taking up her brown shot-silk gown, lest the seat should be dusty. When she told him it was the hearing of his illness which had brought her over to Crabb, he turned cross. He was not ill, he said; only a trifle out of sorts, as every one else must be at times and seasons. By dint of questioning, Mrs. Cramp, who was a stout, comely woman, fond of having her own way, got out of him all Cole had said.

“And Cole is right, Jacob: it is rest and change you want,” she remarked. “You are sure you do not need it? don’t tell me. A stitch in times saves nine, remember.”

“You know nothing about it, Mary Ann.”

“I know that you look thinner and thinner every time I see you. Be wise in time, brother.”

“Cole told me to go away to the seaside for a month. Why, what should I do, mooning for a whole month in a strange place by myself? I should be like a fish out of water.”

“Take your wife and the girls.”

“I dare say! They would only worry me with their fine doings. And look at the expense.”

“I will go with you if you like, Jacob, rather than you should go alone, though it would be an inconvenience to me. And pay my own expenses.”

“Mary Ann, I am not going at all; or thinking of it. It would be impossible for me to leave my business.”

Mrs. Cramp, turning over matters in her mind, determined to put the case plainly before him, and did so; telling him that it would be better to leave his business for a temporary period now, than to find shortly that he must leave it for ever. Jacob sat gazing out straight before him at the Malvern Hills, the chain of which lay against the sky in the distance.

“If you took my advice, brother, you would retire from business altogether. You have made enough to live without it, I suppose–”

“But I have not made enough,” he interrupted.

“Then you ought to have made it, Jacob.”

“Oughts don’t go for much.”

“What I mean is, that you ought to have made it, judging by the style in which you live. Two houses, a carriage and ponies (besides your gig), expensive dress, parties: all that should never be gone into, brother, unless the realized income justifies it.”

“It is the style we live in that has not let me put by, Mary Ann. I don’t tell you I have put nothing by: I have put a little by year by year; but it is not enough to live upon.”

“Then make arrangements for half the proceeds of the business to be given over to you. Let the two boys take to it, and–”

“Who?” cried Jacob.

“The two boys, Tom and Valentine. It will be theirs some time, you know, Jacob: let them have it at once. Tom’s name must be first, as it ought to be. Valentine–”

“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” interposed Jacob, sharply. “I shall keep the business in my own hands as long as I live. Perhaps I may take Valentine into it: not Tom.”

Mrs. Cramp sat for a full minute staring at Jacob, her stout hands, from which the gloves had been taken, and her white lace ruffles lying composedly on her brown gown.

“Not take Tom into the business!” she repeated, in a slow, astonished tone. “Why, Jacob, what do you mean?”

“That,” said Jacob. “Tom will stay on at a good salary: I shall increase it, I dare say, every two years, or so; but he will not come into the firm.”

“You can’t mean what you say.”

“I have meant it this many a year past, Mary Ann. I have never intended to take him in.”

“Jacob, beware! No luck ever comes of fraud.”

“Of what? Fraud?”

“Yes; I say fraud. If you deprive Tom of the place that is justly his, it will be a cheat and a fraud, and nothing short of it.”

“You have a queer way of looking at things, Mrs. Cramp. Who has kept the practice together all these years, but me? and added to it little by little, and made it worth double what it was; ay, and more than double? It is right—right, mind you, Mary Ann—that my own son should succeed to it.”

“Who made the practice in the first place, and took you into it out of brotherly affection, and made you a full partner without your paying a farthing, and for seventeen or eighteen years was the chief prop and stay of it?” retorted Mrs. Cramp. “Why, poor Thomas; your elder brother. Who made him a promise when he was lying dying in that very parlour where your wife and children are now sitting, that Tom should take his proper place in the firm when he was of age, and his half-share with it, according to agreement? Why you. You did, Jacob Chandler.”

“That was all a mistake,” said Jacob, shuffling his thin legs and wrists.

“I will leave you,” said Mrs. Cramp. “I don’t care to discuss questions while you are in this frame of mind. Is this all the benefit you got from the parson’s sermon this morning, and the text he gave out before it? That text: think of it a bit, brother Jacob, and perhaps you’ll see your way to acting differently. Remember,” she added, turning back to him for the last word, which she always had, somehow, “that cheating never prospers in the long run. It never does, Jacob; never: for where it is crafty cheating, hidden away from the sight of man, it is seen and noted by God.”

Her brown skirts (all the shades of a copper tea-kettle) disappeared round the corner by the mulberry-tree, leaving Jacob very angry and uncomfortable. Angry with her, uncomfortable in himself. Do what he would, he could not get that text out of his mind—and what right had she to bring it cropping up to him in that inconvenient way, he wondered, or to speak to him about such matters at all. The verse was a beautiful verse in itself; he had always thought so: but it was not pleasant to be tormented by it—and all through Mary Ann! There it was haunting his memory again!

“Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right: for that shall bring a man peace at the last.”

Jacob Chandler grew to look a little fresher, though not stouter, as the weeks went on: the drive, night and morning, seemed to do him good. Meeting Cole one day, he told him he felt stronger, and did not see why he should not live to be ninety. With all his heart, Cole answered, but most people found seventy long enough.

All at once, without warning, a notice appeared in the local papers, stating that Jacob Chandler had taken his son Valentine into partnership. Mrs. Chandler read it as she sat at breakfast.

“What does it mean, Tom?” she asked.

“I don’t know what it means, mother. We have heard nothing about it at the office.”

“Tom, you may depend your uncle Jacob has done it, and that he does not intend to take you in at all,” spoke Mrs. Chandler, in her strong conviction. “I shall go to him.”

She finished her breakfast and went off there and then, catching Jacob just as he was turning out of the white gate at North Villa to mount his gig: for he still came over to Crabb to sleep. The newspaper was in her hand, and she pointed to the advertisement.

“What does it mean, Jacob?” she asked, just as she had a few minutes before asked of Tom.

“Mean!” said Jacob. “It can’t have more than one meaning, can it? I’ve thought it best to let Val’s name appear in the practice, and made over to him a small share of the profits. Very small, Betsy. He won’t draw much more than he has been drawing as salary.”

“But what of Tom?” questioned poor Mrs. Chandler.

“Of Tom? Well, what of him?”

“When is he to be taken in?”

“Oh, there’s time enough for that. I can’t make two moves at once; it could not be expected of me, Betsy. My son is my son, and he had to come in first.”

“But—Jacob—don’t you think you ought to carry out the agreement made with Tom’s father—that you are bound in honour?” debated Mrs. Chandler, in her meek and non-insisting way.

“Time enough, Betsy. We shall see. And look there, my horse won’t stand: he’s always fresh in the morning.”

Shaking her hand hastily, he stepped up, took the reins from the man, and was off in a trice, bowling along at a quicker pace than usual. The poor woman, left standing there and feeling half-bewildered, saw Mrs. Jacob at one of the open windows, and crossed the lawn to speak.

“I came up about this announcement,” she said. “It is so strange a thing; we can’t understand it at all. Jacob should take Tom into partnership. Especially now that he has taken Valentine.”

“Do you think so?” drawled Mrs. Jacob; who wore a pink top-knot and dirty morning wrapper, and minced her words more than usual, for she thought the more she minced them the finer she was. “Dear me! I’m sure I don’t know anything about it. All well at home, I hope? I won’t ask you in, for I’m going to be busy. My daughters are invited to a garden-party this afternoon, and I must give directions about the trimming of their dresses. Good-morning.”

Back went Mrs. Chandler, and found her son watching for her at the door, waiting to hear what news she brought, before setting out on his usual walk.

“Your uncle slips through it like an eel, Tom,” she began. “I can make nothing of him one way or another. He does not say he will not take you in, but he does not say he will. What is to be done?”

“Nothing can be done that I know of, mother,” replied Tom; “nothing at all. Uncle Jacob holds the power in his own hands, you see. If it does not please him to give me my lawful share, we cannot oblige him to do it.”

“But how unjust it will be if he does not!”

“Yes. I think so. But, it seems to me there’s little else but injustice in the world,” added Tom, with a light smile. “You would say so if you were in a lawyer’s office and had to dive into the cases brought there. Good-bye, mother mine.”

Pretty nearly a year went on after this, bringing no change. “Jacob Chandler and Son, Solicitors, Conveyancers, and Land Agents,” flourished in gilt letters on the front-door at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and Son flourished inside, in the matter of business. But never a move was made to take in Tom. And when Jacob was asked about it, as he was once or twice, he civilly shuffled the topic off.

But, before the year had well elapsed, Jacob was stricken down. To look at him you would have said he had been growing thinner all that while, only that it seemed impossible. This time it was for death. He had not much grace given him, either: just a couple of days and a night.

He went to bed one night as well as usual, but the next morning did not get up, saying he felt “queer,” and sent for Cole. Jacob Chandler was a rare coward in illness. That fining-down process he had been going through so long had not troubled him: he thought it was only his natural constitution: and when real illness set in his fears sprang up.

“You had better stay in bed to-day,” said Cole. “I will send you a draught to take.”

“But what is it that’s the matter with me?” asked Jacob.

“I don’t know,” said Cole.

“Is it ague? Or intermittent fever coming on? See how I am shaking.”

“N—o,” hesitated Cole, either in doubt, or else because he would not say too much. “I’ll look in again by-and-by.”

Towards midday Jacob thought he’d get up, and see what that would do for him. It seemed to do nothing, except make him worse; and he went to bed again. Cole looked in three times during the day, but did not say what he thought.

In the middle of the night a paroxysm of illness came on again, and a servant ran to knock up the doctor. Jacob was shaking the very bed, and seemed in awful fear.

And in the morning he appeared to know that he had not many hours to live. Knew it by intuition, for Cole had not told him. An express went flying to Worcester for Dr. Malden: but Cole knew—and told it later—that all the physicians in the county could not save him.

And the state of mind that Jacob Chandler went into with the knowledge, might have read many a careless man a lesson. It seemed to him that he had a whole peck of suddenly-recollected sins on his head, and misdeeds to be accounted for. He remembered Tom Chandler then.

“I have not done by him as I ought; it lies upon me with an awful weight,” he groaned. “Valentine, you must remedy the wrong. Take him in, and give him his proper share. I should like to see Tom. Some one fetch him.”

Tom had to be fetched from Islip. He came at once, his long legs skimming over the ground quickly; and he entered the sick-chamber with the cordial smile on his open face, and took his uncle’s hand.

“It shall all be remedied, Tom; all the injustice; and you shall have your due rights. I see now how unjust it was: I don’t know what God’s thinking of me for it. I wanted to make a good provision for my old age, you see; to be able to live at ease; and now there is no old age for me: God is taking me before it has come on.”

“Don’t distress yourself, Uncle Jacob; it will be all right. And I’m sure I have not thought much about it.”

“But others have,” groaned Jacob. “Your mother; and Mary Ann; and—and Squire Todhetley. They have all been on at me at times. But I shut my ears. Oh dear! I wish God would let me live a few years over again! I’d try and be different. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”

And that was how he kept on the best part of the day. Then he called out that he wanted his will altered. Valentine brought in pen and ink, but his father motioned him away and said it must be done by Paul. So Paul the lawyer was got over from Islip, and was shut up alone with the sick man for a quarter-of-an-hour. Next the parson came, and read some prayers. But Jacob still cried out his piteous laments, at having no time to redeem the past, until his voice was too weak to speak. At nine o’clock in the evening all was over.

The disease that killed him must have been making silent progress for a good while, Cole said, when the truth was ascertained: but he had never seen it develop itself with so little warning, or prove fatal so quickly as in the case of Jacob Chandler.

II

Jacob Chandler, solicitor, conveyancer, and land-agent, had died: and his son Valentine (possibly taking a leaf out of the history of Jonas Chuzzlewit) determined that he should at least be borne to the grave with honours, if he had never had an opportunity to specially bear them in life. Crabb churchyard was a show of mutes and plumes, and Crabb highway was blocked up with black coaches. As it is considered a compliment down with us to get an invitation to a funeral, and a great slight on the dead to refuse it, all classes, from Sir John Whitney, down to Massock, the brickmaker, and little Farmer Bean, responded to Valentine Chandler’s notes. Some people said that it was Valentine’s mother, the new widow, who wished for so much display; and probably they were right.

It took place on a Saturday. I can see the blue sky overhead now, and the bright sun that shone upon the scene and lighted up the feathers. It was thought he must have died rich, and that the three daughters he left would have good portions. His son Valentine had the practice: so, at any rate, he was provided for. Tom Chandler, the nephew, made one of the mourners: and the spectators talked freely enough in an undertone, as he passed them in his place when the procession walked up the churchyard path. It seemed but the other day, they said, that his poor father was buried, killed by that lamentable accident. Time flew. Years passed imperceptibly. But Jacob—lying so still under that black and white pall, now slowly disappearing within the church—had not done the right thing by his dead brother’s son. The practice had been made by Thomas, the elder brother. Thomas took Jacob into full partnership without fee or recompense; and there was an understanding entered into between them later (but no legal agreement) that if the life of either failed his son should succeed to his post. If Thomas, the elder, died, his son Tom was to take his father’s place as senior partner in due time. Thomas did die; died suddenly; but from that hour to this, Jacob had never attempted to carry out the agreement: he had taken his own son, Valentine, into partnership, but not Tom. And Crabb knew, both North and South, for such things get about curiously, that the injustice had troubled Jacob when he was dying, and that he had charged Valentine to remedy it.

Sunday morning was not so fine: leaden clouds, threatening rain, had overshadowed the summer sky. But all the family mourners came to church, Valentine wearing his long crape hatband and shoulder scarf (for that was our custom); the widow in her costly mourning, and the three girls in theirs. The mourning was furnished, Miss Timmens took the opportunity of whispering to Mrs. Todhetley, from a fashionable black shop at Worcester: and, to judge by the frillings and furbelows, very fashionable indeed the shop must have been. Mrs. Chandler and her son Tom sat together in their own pew, Mrs. Cramp, Jacob’s sister, with them. It chanced that we were staying at Crabb Cot at the time of Jacob’s death, just as we had been at Thomas’s, and so saw the doings and heard the sayings, and the Squire was at hand for both funerals.

The next morning, Monday, Valentine Chandler took his place in the office as master for the first time, and seated himself in his late father’s chair in the private room. He and his mother had already held some conversation as to arrangements for the future. Valentine said he should live at the office at Islip: now that there was only himself he should have more to do, and did not want the bother of walking or driving to and fro morning and evening. She would live entirely at North Villa.

Valentine took his place in his father’s room; and the clerks, who had been hail-fellow-well-met with him hitherto, put on respect of manner, and called him Mr. Chandler. Tom had an errand to do every Monday morning connected with the business, and did not enter until nearly eleven o’clock. Before settling to his desk, he went in to Valentine.

They shook hands. In times of bereavement we are apt to observe more ceremony than at others. Tom sat down: which caused the new master to look towards him inquiringly.

“Valentine, I want to have a bit of talk with you. Upon what footing am I to be on here?”

“How do you mean?” asked Valentine: who was leaning back in the green leather chair with the air of his new importance full upon him, his elbows on the low arms, and an ivory paper-knife held between his fingers.

“My uncle Jacob told me that from henceforth I was to assume my right place here, Valentine. I suppose it will be so.”

“What do you call your right place?” cried Valentine.

“Well, my right place would be head of the office,” replied Tom, speaking, as he always did, cordially and pleasantly. “But I don’t wish to be exacting. Make me your partner, Valentine, and give me the second place in the firm.”

“Can’t do it, old fellow,” said Valentine, in tones which seemed to say he would like to joke the matter off. “The practice was my father’s, and it is now mine.”

“But you know that part of it ought to have been mine from the first, Valentine. That is, from the time I have been of an age to succeed to it.”

“I don’t know it, I’m sure, Tom. If it ‘ought’ to have been yours, I suppose my father would have given it to you. He was able to judge.”

Tom dropped his voice. “He sent for me that last day of his life, you know, Valentine. It was to tell me he had not done the right thing by me, but that it should be done now: that he had charged you to do it.”

“Ah,” said Valentine, carelessly, “worn-out old men take up odd fancies—fit for a lunatic asylum. My poor father must have been spent with disease, though not with age: but we did not know it.”

“Will you make me your partner?”

“No, Tom, I can’t. The practice was all my father’s, and the practice must be mine. Look here: on that same day you speak of he sent for John Paul to add a codicil to his will. Now it stands to reason that if he had wished me to take you into the firm, he would have mentioned it in that codicil and bound me down to do it.”

“And he did not?”

“Not a word of it. You are quite welcome to read the will. It is a very short and simple one: leaving what property he had to my mother, and the business and office furniture to me. The codicil Paul wrote was to decree that I should pay my mother a certain sum out of the profits. Your name is not mentioned in the will at all, from beginning to end.”

Tom made no reply. Valentine continued.

“The object of his tying me down to pay over to my mother a portion of the profits is, because she has not enough to live on without it. There need be no secret about it. I am to give her a third of the income I make, whatsoever it may be.”

“One final word, Valentine: will you be just and take me in?”

“No, Tom, I cannot. And there’s another thing. I don’t wish to be mean, I’m sure; it’s not in my nature: but with all my own expenses upon me and this third that I must hand over to my people, I fear I shall not be able to continue to give your mother the hundred and fifty a-year that my father has allowed her so long.”

“You cannot help yourself, Valentine. That much is provided for in the original partnership deed, and you are bound by it.”

“No,” dissented Valentine, flicking a speck off the front of his black coat. “My father might have been bound by it, but I am not. Now that the two original partners are dead, the deed is cancelled, don’t you see. It is not binding upon me.”

“I think you are mistaken: but I will leave that question for this morning. Is your decision, not to give me a share, final?”

“It is.”

“Let me make one remark. You say the codicil stipulates that you shall pay a third of the profits to your mother—and it is a very just and right thing to do. Valentine, rely upon it, that your father’s last intentions were that, of the other two-thirds left, one of them should be mine.”

Valentine flushed red. He had a florid complexion at all times, something like salmon-colour. Very different from Tom’s, which was clear and healthy.

“We won’t talk any more about it, Tom. How you can get such crotchets into your head, I can’t imagine. If you sit there till midday, I can say no more than I have said: I cannot take you into partnership.”

“Then I shall leave you,” said Tom, rising. He was a fine-looking young fellow, standing there with his arm on the back of the client’s chair, in which he had sat; tall and straight. His good, honest face had a shade of pain in it, as it gazed straight out to Valentine’s. He looked his full six-and-twenty years.

“Well, I wish you would leave me, Tom,” replied Valentine, carelessly. “I have heaps to do this morning.”

“Leave the office, I mean. Leave you for good.”

“Nonsense!”

“Though your father did not give me the rights that were my just due, I remained on, expecting and hoping that he would give them some time. It was my duty to remain with him; at least, my mother told me so; and perhaps my interest. But the case is changed now. I will not stay with you, Valentine, unless you do me justice; I shall leave you now. Now, this hour.”

“But you can’t, Tom. You would put me to frightful inconvenience.”

“And what inconvenience—inconvenience for life—are you putting me to, Valentine? You take my prospects from me. The position that ought to be mine, here at Islip, you refuse to let me hold. This was my father’s practice; a portion of it, at least, ought to be mine. I will not continue to be a servant where I ought to be a master.”

“Then you must go,” said Valentine.

Tom held out his hand. “Good-bye. I do not part in enmity.”

“Good-bye, Tom. I’m sorry: but it’s your fault.”

Tom Chandler went into the office where he had used to sit, opened his desk, and began putting up what things belonged to him. They made a tolerable-sized parcel. Valentine, left in his chair of state, sat on in a brown study. All the inconvenience that Tom’s leaving him would be productive of was flashing into his mind. Tom had been, under old Jacob, the prop and stay of the business; knew about everything, and had a clear head for details. He himself was different—and Valentine was never more sure of the fact than at this moment. There are lawyers and lawyers. Tom was one, Valentine was another. He, Valentine, had never much cared for business; he liked pleasure a great deal better. Indulged always by both father and mother, he had grown up self-indulgent. It was all very fine to perch himself in that chair and play the master; but he knew that, without Tom to direct things, for some time to come he should be three-parts lost. But, as to making him a partner and giving him a share? “No,” concluded Valentine emphatically, “I won’t do it.”

Tom, carrying his paper parcel, left the house and crossed the road to the post-office, which was higher up the street, to post a letter he had hastily written. It was addressed to a lawyer at Worcester. A week or two before, Tom, being at Worcester, was asked by this gentleman if he would take the place of head clerk and manager in his office. The question was put jokingly, for the lawyer supposed Tom to be a fixture at Islip: but Tom saw that he would have been glad for him to take the berth. He hoped it might still be vacant. What with one thing and another, beginning with the injustice done him at the old place and his anxiety to get into another without delay, Tom felt more bothered than he had ever felt in his life. The tempting notion of setting-up somewhere for himself came into his mind. But it went out of it again: he could not afford to risk any waste of time, with his mother’s home to keep up, and especially with this threat of Valentine’s to stop her hundred and fifty pounds a-year income.