"Well," he asked, "have you got the situation?"
"No; but I am going to call to-morrow morning at ten o'clock and obtain it."
"Umph!" said John Turner; "I did not know you were such a scoundrel."
Chapter II
Monsieur
"La destinée a deux manières de nous briser; en se refusant à nos désirs et en les accomplissant."
To some the night brings wiser or at all events a second counsel. For myself, however, it has never been so. In the prosecution of such small enterprises as have marked a life no more eventful than those around it, I have always awakened in the morning of the same mind as I was when sleep laid its quiet hand upon me. It seems, moreover, that I have made just as many as but no more mistakes than my neighbours. Taking it likewise as a broad generality, the balance seems, in my experience, to tell quite perceptibly in favour of those who make up their minds and hold to that decision firmly, rather than towards such men as seek counsel of the multitude and trim their sail to the tame breeze of precedent.
"Always go straight for a jump," my father had shouted to me once, years ago, while I sat up in a Norfolk ditch and watched my horse disappear through a gap in the next hedge.