“When I die,” continued my father, “my pay dies with me. I have saved nothing—what have I to save? This is not so cheap a place to live in as people think. There was, indeed, a time when ten francs would purchase poultry enough to stock a hotel for a week, but now I can scarcely put a pair of fowls on my table for that money. When I die, what is to become of you? If you don’t think of that now, you will find yourself in a muddle some of these days. Tom can be the making of you if he likes. A hundred and fifty a year, let me tell you, is a very handsome beginning.”
“Yes; but a banker’s clerk!”
“You needn’t call yourself that. You’ll be known as your uncle’s nephew, and I should always speak of you as a banker. And after all, what does it signify what you’re called, so long as you have prospects?”
“I know I can’t do any good by remaining here,” said I, gloomily; “but that doesn’t make me want to leave.”
“Man,” answered my father with the solemnity of a Rasselas, “is not a vegetable. Legs were given him to walk with, and the world was made for him to look at. As we advance in life our wants dwindle to a point. No man could ever have started with more copious aspirations than I did, and now whist is the one solitary pleasure that satisfies me. I don’t know,” he continued, stroking his fine whiskers, “how it came about that I never thought of sending a line to Tom about you before. Answer his letter after breakfast, and take care to thank him for his kindness. I consider his offer a very handsome one.”
“It’s awfully sudden,” said I.
Indeed it was: and I thought it hard that I should be called upon to act and decide for myself without having received one word of warning that a change was to take place. It was not to be expected that I could let fall at once those prejudices in favour of an idle life which had been the accumulation of six years of steady inactivity.
“All good fortune is sudden,” said my father.
“Do you mean to accept the invitation?”
“No; apart from my horror of the sea, I should prefer that you entered life alone. There is a dignity in solitude—a suggestion of self-dependence, my boy, that all men of the world admire. Of course on your arrival you will assure everybody of my affectionate and brotherly sentiments.”