Mr. Hogarth's Will

by Catherine Helen Spence

"A permanent residence is clearly forbidden; for no assistance, beyond the small money payment specified, Can be offered or accepted; but I think a month to remain and to collect all their wardrobe and personal property may be permitted."

"I ought to return to the bank, and work till they find a substitute, and will leave my cousins the undisturbed possession of Cross Hall for a month. In the meantime, I feel as if my presence must be a painful intrusion. I must leave you."

"Perhaps," said Jane, "though you cannot give us money, you may be able to give us advice. You are going to Edinburgh; you may see or hear of something we could do."

"I should be most happy to do so. What line of life should you like to enter on?"

"Anything we could make a living by."

"Then I suppose a governess's situation?"

"I might teach boys, but I have not learned what would qualify me to instruct girls. But I do thoroughly understand bookkeeping, write a good hand, have gone through Euclid, and know as much of the classics as nine out of ten young men in my rank of life. But my uncle cared very little for the classics. I know a good deal of chemistry and mineralogy, but uncle was most pleased with my bookkeeping. How did you get on when you began to work for yourself?"

"I entered the bank as a junior clerk, at the age of sixteen, and got 30 pounds for the first two years. An unknown friend—I know now who he was—who had paid for my education and all other expenses previously, sent me 12 pounds a year for three years to help out my earnings."

"And you could live on that?" said Jane.

"I did live on it somehow," said Francis. "My coats were very threadbare and my meals scanty, but I weathered these three years, and then I got a good step, and crept up gradually. I have been now in this same bank for seventeen years, and am at present in the receipt of 250 pounds a year, thinking myself rich and fortunate;—now I am rich and unfortunate. Why did not my father leave me to the career I had made for myself, and you to the inheritance you had been brought up to expect?"