Neither could I bear to accept Mr. Burford's second invitation, though I knew he would have been only too glad to surround me with comforts at his own cost, or do anything to make up for his inability to receive me in his own house. So I told him, very gratefully, that I could not intrude on Mr. Gordon.

"Gordon is quite willing, indeed delighted at the thought of your joining him," said Mr. Burford.

I, however, repeated my thanks, and persisted in my refusal, though I was sorry to pain my one true friend. He did not press for reasons; I think he guessed them.

He only asked me, "What shall you do? Where will you go, Jack, if you persist in refusing me this pleasure?"

"Anything. Harvest work, if I can find nothing else. Hands will be wanted in the fields, but I shall go a few miles away before I ask for something to do."

I spoke in a reckless way, for my heart was full of bitterness, and I said to myself, "There is one advantage in poverty even: I shall be free to choose my own mode of working. No one will contend for the privilege of being my guardian. With Lint Hall at my back, tutors and governors would have been necessary. As it is, the living waif may drift whither he will, and none will hinder him from sinking or help him to rise."

"My dear Jack, you will not need to ask for work in the harvest-fields. In three days, you will own a capital of twelve pounds ten shillings—half-a-year's interest on your five hundred. You need not look at me as if I were telling you an untruth, or inventing a payment in order to help you over your first difficulties. This is July twenty-third. On the twenty-sixth your half-year's interest will be due. Your father allowed the interest to accumulate for some time, intending to add it to the principal, but when he became embarrassed, he spent it. He had a right to do so whilst you were under age, as he supplied all your wants."

"Twelve pounds ten!—My very own!" It sounded quite a fortune under present circumstances.

And as Mr. Burford quietly laid before me an account-book, in which previous interest payments had been duly entered and signed for by my father, I saw that the money would be honestly mine, and I might reckon on a like sum each half-year.

The first thoughts of pleasure in connection with this money were not selfish ones. I had some school debts, amounting in all to not more than ten shillings, but the memory of them cost me several sleepless hours, after I first realised my altered position. They had seemed justifiable debts, and only such as all schoolboys are in the habit of contracting, though I had rarely incurred any. Had my usual allowance come when due, instead of the news of my father's death, they would have been honourably paid. In three more days I should send the money, and Jack Simpson's name would be freed from the reproach of having contracted debts which he could not pay.

Then there was cousin Dorothy's fifty pounds, about which Mr. Burford said she was so angry that she declined to attend my father's funeral. No hope of paying that, though if I could have drawn so much of my five hundred pounds, I should certainly have done it, and diminished my future income to that extent, in order to stop my relative's tongue. She was only my second cousin. I was glad to remember that; and her name was not Simpson, but the more appropriate one of Flint, her mother having been my grandfather's sister. That she had heaps of money—more than she could count—was the popular belief, and that she never parted with a penny if she could help it, was also deemed a matter of certainty.

A happy thought struck me. I might pay Miss Flint the interest on the loan; it would only be two pounds five a year, for she had lent her money at four and a half per cent. It was a peculiarity of cousin Dorothy's that, close-fisted as she might be, she never exacted high interest, not considering it safe to do so.

She used to say, "People who promise six or seven per cent. would just as soon say ten, for they never mean to pay either it or the principal. I like borrowers who haggle over the rate and stand out for a quarter per cent. as if their lives depended on it; those are the payers. High interest and great risks go hand-in-hand."

No doubt Miss Flint was right, but my poor father's trifling loan, being likely to prove a loss, was an especially aggravating exception, since it showed that it was possible for low interest and great risk to go hand-in-hand also, and cousin Dorothy hated to be less than infallible.

When I told Mr. Burford that I should pay Miss Flint's interest, I was met by a prompt remonstrance.

"My dear lad, it would be utter folly for you to do it. She is as rich as—I mean she is extremely well off, and will never miss the principal, whilst every penny is of consequence to you. You might just as well hold yourself responsible to some of the swindlers who drew your poor father into those wretched speculations to his ruin. They lost nothing, for an excellent reason—they had nothing to lose."

"And I do not care for them because they drained my poor father of his last shilling. But cousin Dorothy is different; he really had her money, and I shall pay the interest, if I live on bread and water to do it, until I am of age. Then she shall have her fifty pounds back out of my five hundred."

Mr. Burford saw that I was in earnest, and yielded, partly because he could not help himself—partly, I believe, because he imagined that my self-denial might impress Miss Flint favourably on my behalf. I made no such calculation, but I did resolve that, however little I might have to spend, I would not get into debt. And that, however uncongenial any work might be that offered itself, I would undertake it, if within my power to perform, and do it with my might.

I told Mr. Burford so, and he promised to find me a post if possible.

"But in the meanwhile?" he said, and waited for an answer, which he thought I should be puzzled to give him. He believed I should be driven to join Gordon in the rooms over the chemist's after all.