Some weeks passed whilst I was turning this over
and over in my mind. I was constantly forgetting things in the office, but Moses Benson helped me out of every scrape. He was kinder and kinder, so that I often felt sorry that I could not feel fonder of him, and that his notions of fun and amusement only disgusted me instead of making us friends. They convinced me of one thing. My dear mother’s chief dread about my going out of my own country was for the wicked ways I might learn in strange lands. A town with an unpronounceable name suggested foreign iniquities to her tender fears, but our own town, where she and everybody we knew bought everything we daily used, did not frighten her at all. I did not tell her, but I was quite convinced myself that I might get pretty deep into mischief in my idle hours, even if I lived within five miles of home, and had only my uncle’s clerks for my comrades.
During these weeks Jem came home for the holidays. He was at a public school now, which many of our friends regarded as an extravagant folly on my father’s part. We had a very happy time together, and this would have gone far to keep me at home, if it had not, at the same time, deepened my disgust with our town, and my companions in the office. In plain English, the training of two good schools, and the society of boys superior to himself, had made a gentleman of Jem, and the contrast be
tween his looks and ways, and manners, and those of my uncle’s clerks were not favourable to the latter. How proud my father was of him! With me he was in a most irritable mood; and one grumble to which I heard him give utterance, that it was very inconvenient to have to pay this money just at the most expensive period of Jem’s education, went heavily into the scale for running away. And that night, as it happened, Jem and I sat up late, and had a long and loving chat. He abused the office to my heart’s content, and was very sympathetic when I told him that I had wished to go to sea, and how my father had refused to allow me.
“I think he made a great mistake,” said Jem; and he told me of “a fellow’s brother” that he knew about, who was in the Merchant Service, and how well he was doing. “It’s not even as if Uncle Henry were coming out generously,” he added.
Dear, dear! How pleasant it was to hear somebody else talk on my side of the question. And who was I that I should rebuke Jem for calling our worthy uncle a curmudgeon, and stigmatising the Jew-clerk as a dirty beast? I really dared not tell him that Moses grew more familiar as my time to be articled drew near; that he called me Jack Sprat, and his dearest friend, and offered to procure me the “silver-top” (or champagne)—which he said I must “stand” on
the day I took my place at the fellow desk to his—of the first quality and at less than cost price; and that he had provided me gratis with a choice of “excuses” (they were unblushing lies) to give to our good mother for spending that evening in town, and “having a spree.”
From my affairs we came to talk of Jem’s, and I found that even he, poor chap! was not without his troubles. He confided to me, with many expressions of shame and vexation, that he had got into debt, but having brought home good reports and even a prize on this occasion, he hoped to persuade my father to pay what he owed.
“You see, Jack, he’s awfully good to me, but he will do things his own way, and what’s worse, the way they were done in his young days. You remember the row we had about his giving me an allowance? He didn’t want to, because he never had one, only tips from his governor when the old gentleman was pleased with him. And he said it was quite enough to send me to such a good and expensive school, and I ought to think of that, and not want more because I had got much. We’d an awful row, for I thought it was so unfair his making out I was greedy and ungrateful, and I told him so, and I said I was quite game to go to a cheap school if he liked, only wherever I was I did want to be ‘like the other fellows.’ I begged him to
take me away and to let me go somewhere cheap with you; and I said, if the fellows there had no allowances, we could do without. As I told him, it’s not the beastly things that you buy that you care about, only of course you don’t like to be the only fellow who can’t buy ’em. So then he came round, and said I should have an allowance, but I must do with a very small one. So I said, Very well, then I mustn’t go in for the games. Then he wouldn’t have that; so then I made out a list of what the subscriptions are to cricket, and so on, and then your flannels and shoes, and it came to double what he offered me. He said it was simply disgraceful that boys shouldn’t be able to be properly educated, and have an honest game at cricket for the huge price he paid, without the parents being fleeced for all sorts of extravagances at exorbitant prices. And I know well enough it’s disgraceful, what we have to pay for school books and for things of all sorts you have to get in the town; but, as I said to the governor, why don’t you kick up a dust with the head master, or write to the papers—what’s the good of rowing us? One must have what other fellows have, and get ’em where other fellows get ’em. But he never did—I wish he would. I should enjoy fighting old Pompous if I were in his place. But they’re as civil as butter to each other, and then old Pompous goes on feathering his nest, and backing up the tradespeople,