“If I had not begun early, I should have begun late,” was the reply.
“And then I am tied to this place.”
“No, you are not,” was the reply. “But you are like all men possessed of a small income—afraid of losing it. A man who begins with nothing has a far better chance of success than his neighbour, who starts on five or six hundred.”
“Besides, I ought to have begun long ago,” persisted Arthur.
“Better late than never,” quoted Mr. Black. “I tell you what it is now, Dudley, as long as we have got on this subject, let us talk about it. You want to make money, don’t you?”
“The question is scarcely necessary,” answered Squire Dudley, with a faint smile. “Do you chance to know any man who does not?”
“Yes,” was the ready reply. “I know several who think themselves so deucedly safe, and comfortable, and secure, and all the rest of it, that they would not take a share in Rothschild’s, if it were offered to them for an old song. There is your friend Raidsford, for instance.”
“Oh! he’s no friend of mine,” corrected Arthur.
“Well, he is a case in point, at any rate. Lord Kemms does not consider our new company beneath his consideration, at any rate, and what is worth his attention ought not to be below that of a twopenny-halfpenny contractor, though that contractor may think there is nobody like Compton Raidsford, Esquire, in the world.”
“You do not mean to say there is a likelihood of Lord Kemms going into your company?” said Arthur, eagerly.