"I shall only be too happy to stay, sir."
"Very well," said Mr. Preen, ringing his bell for the managing-clerk. "And you shall then have an answer."
Charles was put to work by Mr. Stroud: who came and looked at him three or four times whilst he was doing the copying. He wrote slowly: the result of his extra care, his intensely earnest wish to succeed: but his writing was good and clear.
"I shall write quickly enough in a day or two, when I am used to it," he said, looking up: and there was hope in his face as well as his tone.
Mr. Preen chanced to be standing by. The writing would do, he decided; and Mr. Stroud was told to engage him. To begin with, his salary was to be fifteen shillings a-week: in a short time—as soon, indeed, as his suiting them was assured—it would be raised to eighteen. He was to enter on the morrow.
"Where do you live?" curtly questioned Mr. Stroud.
"Just beyond Kennington."
"Take care that you are punctual. Nine o'clock is the hour for the copying-clerks. You are expected to be at work by that time, therefore you must get here before the clock strikes."
A very easy condition, as it seemed to Charles Raynor, in his elation. A copying-clerk in a lawyer's office at fifteen or eighteen shillings a-week! Had any one told him a year ago that he would be capable of accepting so degrading a post—as he would then have deemed it—he had surely said the world must first turn itself upside down. Now he went home with a joyous step and a light heart, hardly knowing whether he trod on his head or his heels.
And at Laurel Cottage they held quite a jubilee. Fifteen shillings a-week added to the narrow income of twenty, seemed at the moment to look very like riches. Charles had formed all sorts of mental resolutions as he walked home: to manage his clothes carefully lest they should grow shabby; scarcely to tread on his boots that they might not wear out: and to make his daily dinner of bread-and-cheese, carried in his pocket from home. Ah, these resolves are good, and more than good; and generous, wholesome-hearted young fellows are proud to make them in the time of need. But in their inexperience they cannot foresee the long, wearing, depressing struggle that the years must entail, during which the efforts and the privation must be persevered in. And it is well they cannot.