the best chance for you 'ud be to have a place on a wharf or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell of things - but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound: you'd have to stand cold and wet and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You're too fine a gentleman for that.'

Mr Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply.

`I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, Sir: I would put up with what was disagreeable.'

`That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember, it isn't only laying hold of a rope - you must go on pulling. It's the mistake you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way I started, young man: when I was sixteen my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the heads of the best firms in St Ogg's.'

Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.

`Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I should do for? I should like to set to work at once,' said Tom, with a slight tremor in his voice.

`Stop a bit, stop a bit: we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You must bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, because you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it remains to be seen whether you're good for anything.'

`I hope I should never do you any discredit, uncle,' said Tom, hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel no ground for trusting them. `I care about my own credit too much for that.'

`Well done, Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody, if they've a mind to do themselves justice. There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now - I shall do what I can for that young man - he's got some pith in him. But then you see he's made good use of his time - a first-rate calculator - can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonly knowing in manufactures, that young fellow.'

`I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?' said Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.

`Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But... ah, Spence, you're back again. Well, Tom, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think, and I must go to business again. Goodby. Remember me to your mother.'

Mr Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Tom had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of Mr Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to call at his uncle Glegg's about the money in the Savings' Bank, and by the time he set out again, the mist had thickened and he could not see very far before him, but going along River Street again, he was startled when he was within two yards of the projecting side of a shop-window, by the words `Dorlcote Mill' in large letters on a hand-bill, placed as if on purpose to stare at him. It was the catalogue of the sale to take place the next week - it was a reason for hurrying faster out of the town.