Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/339

 have seen me counting it over. I could not have had a prouder or more swelling heart if I had been, that great man Mr. Elwes the miser. And what bad luck it brought me, and how it all frittered itself away! Nothing to show for it but a silk ladder and an old hurdy-gurdy, and I sold them at half price. Then when I had the accident, which cost me this eye, the railway people behaved so generously, gave me L120,—think of that! And before three days the money was all gone!"

"How was that?" said George, half-amused, half-pained,—"stolen perhaps?"

"Not so," answered Waife, somewhat gloomily, "but restored. A poor dear old man, who thought very ill of me, and I don't wonder at it,—was reduced from great wealth to great poverty. While I was laid up, my landlady read a newspaper to me, and in that newspaper was an account of his reverse and destitution. But I was accountable to him for the balance of an old debt, and that, with the doctor's bills, quite covered my L120. I hope he does not think quite so ill of me now. But the money brought good luck to him, rather than to me. Well, sir, if you were now to give me money, I should be on the look-out for some mournful calamity. Gold is not natural to me. Some day, however, by and by, when you are inducted into your living, and have become a renowned preacher, and have plenty to spare, with an idea that you will feel more comfortable in your mind if you had done something royal for the basketmaker, I will ask you to help me to make up a sum, which I am trying by degrees to save,—an enormous sum, almost as much as I paid away from my railway compensation: I owe it to the lady who lent it to release Sophy from an engagement which I—certainly without any remorse of conscience—made the child break."

"Oh, yes! What is the amount? Let me at least repay that debt."

"Not yet. The lady can wait; and she would be pleased to wait, because she deserves to wait: it would be unkind to her to pay it off at once. But in the meanwhile if you could send me a few good books for Sophy,—instructive, yet not very, very dry,-and a French dictionary, I can teach her French when the winter days close in. You see I am not above being paid, sir. But, Mr. Morley, there is a great favour you can do me."

"What is it? Speak."

"Cautiously refrain from doing me a great disservice! You are going back to your friends and relations. Never