"That's right. Never lose a day. In losing a day now, you don't lose what you might earn now in a day, but what you might be earning when you're at your best. A young man should always remember that. You can't dispense with a round in the ladder going up. You only make your time at the top so much the shorter."
"I hope you'll find that I'm all right, sir. I don't mean to be idle."
"Pray don't. Of course, you know, I speak to you very differently from what I should do if you were simply going away from my office. What I shall have to give Florence will be very little,—that is, comparatively little. She shall have a hundred a year, when she marries, till I die; and after my death and her mother's she will share with the others. But a hundred a year will be nothing to you."
"Won't it, sir? I think a very great deal of a hundred a year. I'm to have a hundred and fifty from the office; and I should be ready to marry on that to-morrow."
"You couldn't live on such an income,—unless you were to alter your habits very much."
"But I will alter them."
"We shall see. You are so placed that by marrying you would lose a considerable income; and I would advise you to put off thinking of it for the next two years."
"My belief is, that settling down would be the best thing in the world to make me work."
"We'll try what a year will do. So Florence is to go to your father's house at Easter?"
"Yes, sir; she has been good enough to promise to come, if you have no objection."