`Well, I can't deny you , mum,' said Bob, handing it out.`Eh see what a pattern now! Real Laceham goods.Now, this is the sort o' article I'm recommendin' Mr Tom to send out.Lors, it's a fine thing for anybody as has got a bit o' money - these Laceham goods 'ud make it breed like maggits.If I was a lady wi' a bit o' money! - why, I know one as put thirty pound into them goods - a lady wi' a cork leg, but as sharp - you wouldn't catch her runnin' her head into a sack: she 'd see her way clear out o' anything afore she'd be in a hurry to start.Well, she let out thirty pound to a young man in the drapering line, and he laid it out i' Laceham goods, an' a shupercargo o' my acquinetance (not Salt) took 'em out, an' she got her eight per zent fust go off - an' now you can't hold her but she must be sendin' out carguies wi' every ship, till she's gettin' as rich as a Jew.Bucks her name is - she doesn't live i' this town.Now, then, mum, if you'll please to give me the net...'
`Here's fifteen shilling, then, for the two,' said Mrs Glegg.`But it's a shameful price.'
`Nay, mum, you'll niver say that when you're upo' your knees i' church i' five years' time.I'm makin' you a present o' th' articles - I am, indeed.
That eightpence shaves off my profit as clean as a razor.Now then, sir,'
continued Bob, shouldering his pack, `if you please, I'll be glad to go and see about makin' Mr Tom's fortin.Eh, I wish I'd got another twenty pound to lay out for my sen: I shouldn't stay to say my Catechism afore I know'd what to do wi't.'
`Stop a bit, Mr Glegg,' said the lady, as her husband took his hat, `you never will give me the chance o' speaking.You'll go away now, and finish everything about this business, and come back and tell me it's too late for me to speak.As if I wasn't my nevvy's own aunt, and th' head o' the family on his mother's side! and laid by guineas, all full weight for him - as he'll know who to respect when I'm laid in my coffin.'
`Well, Mrs G., say what you mean,' said Mr G.hastily.
`Well, then, I desire as nothing may be done without my knowing.I don't say as I shan't venture twenty pounds, if you make out as everything's right and safe.And if I do, Tom,' concluded Mrs Glegg, turning impressively to her nephew, `I hope you'll allays bear it in mind and be grateful for such an aunt - I mean you to pay me interest, you know - I don't approve o' giving: we niver looked for that in my family.'
`Thank you, aunt,' said Tom, rather proudly.`I prefer having the money only lent to me.'
`Very well: that's the Dodson sperrit,' said Mrs Glegg, rising to get her knitting with the sense that any further remark after this would be bathos.
Salt - that eminently `briny chap' - having been discovered in a cloud of tobacco smoke at the Anchor Tavern, Mr Glegg commenced inquiries which turned out satisfactorily enough to warrant the advance of the `nest-egg,'
to which aunt Glegg contributed twenty pounds; and in this modest beginning you see the ground of a fact which might otherwise surprise you, namely, Tom's accumulation of a fund, unknown to his father, that promised in no very long time to meet the more tardy process of saving and quite cover the deficit.When once his attention had been turned to this source of gain, Tom determined to make the most of it, and lost no opportunity of obtaining information and extending his small enterprises.In not telling his father, he was influenced by that strange mixture of opposite feelings which often gives equal truth to those who blame an action and those who admire it: partly, it was that disinclination to confidence which is seen between near kindred - that family repulsion which spoils the most sacred relations of our lives; partly, it was the desire to surprise his father with a great joy.He did not see that it would have been better to soothe the interval with a new hope, and prevent the delirium of a too sudden elation.
At the time of Maggie's first meeting with Philip, Tom had already nearly a hundred and fifty pounds of his own capital, and while they were walking by the evening light in the Red Deeps, he, by the same evening light, was riding into Laceham, proud of being on his first journey on behalf of Guest and Co., and revolving in his mind all the chances that by the end of another year he should have doubled his gains, lifted off the obloquy of debt from his father's name, and perhaps - for he should be twenty-one - have got a new start for himself, on a higher platform of employment.Did he not deserve it? He was quite sure that he did.
