“No, I’m not going to ask her. It’s no good, Vic; I won’t.”
“Well,” said Pradelle, apostrophising an ingot of tin as it lay at his feet glistening with iridescent hues, “if any one had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it. Why, Harry, lad, you’ve only been a month at this mill-horse life, and you’re quite changed. What have they been doing to you, man?”
“Breaking my spirit, I suppose, they’d call it,” said the young man bitterly.
“Nonsense! yours isn’t a spirit to be broken in to a beggarly trade. Think of what your aunt has said to you, as well as to me. Your estates, your title, the woman you are to marry. Why, Harry, lad, you don’t think I’m going to sit still and see you break down without a word?”
Harry shook his head.
“Get out! I won’t have it. You want waking up,” said Pradelle in a low, earnest voice. “Think, lad, a few pounds placed as I could place ’em, and there’s fortune for in both, without reckoning on what you could do in France. As your aunt say, there’s money and a title waiting for you if you’ll only stretch out your hand to take ’em. Come, rouse yourself. Harry Vine isn’t the lad to settle down to this drudgery. Why, I thought it was one of the workmen when I came up.”
“It’s of no use,” said Harry gloomily, as he seated himself on the ingots of tin. “A man must submit to his fate.”
“Bah! a man’s fate is what he makes it. Look here; fifty or a hundred borrowed for a few days, and then repaid.”
“But suppose—”
“Suppose!” cried Pradelle mockingly; “a business man has no time to suppose, he strikes while the iron’s hot. You’re going to strike iron, not tin.”