Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.

_Frontispiece._]]

WORK, WAIT, WIN.

BY

RUTH LAMB

AUTHOR OF "ONE LITTLE VEIN OF DROSS," "AN ANGEL GUEST," "ONLY A GIRL WIFE," "COMFORTABLE MRS. CROOK," ETC. ETC.

LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.

MDCCCXCI.

I MUST begin my story by telling how I came down in the world. The descent was effected for me whilst I was a boy at school, and before I had anything to do with the shaping of my own fortunes or misfortunes.

I was supposed to have excellent prospects, and to have been born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, for I was the son of a wealthy country gentleman, and heir-presumptive to many broad acres that had never been encumbered as yet.

I was just sixteen and at Rugby when the shock came. My father was dead, and my patrimony was hopelessly gone; probably the knowledge that he was a ruined man, and that my prospects were wrecked, had killed him.

Six years before, my father had been bitten with a craze for speculation, and had invested largely in mines which were to have been El Dorados, but which swallowed up our family acres instead. The land was not entailed, but had passed from father to son for two centuries or more. Now it belonged to Mr. Randal Burford, the family lawyer.

It is only just to say of him that he had done his utmost to prevent my father from risking the property, and, as its purchaser, had paid full value for it.

I only realised my position by degrees. Everything was gone or going, and had there been more, it would have followed. Just one day before the news came, there was no lighter-hearted lad in the old school than I, or one to whom a bright future seemed more assured. Now all was dark before me.

Mr. Burford was kind in letting me know the worst at once. Ill news, forwarded by driblets, gives a succession of shocks, each of which comes as a fresh trial.

I left school without delay, of course. Mr. Burford would have had me go to his house, but I clung to Lint Hall, the only home I had known, until after my father's funeral, then left it with a heavy heart.

I asked Mr. Burford how my father had been induced to enter on these disastrous speculations.

"It was for want of something to do," he said. "A perilous position for any one to be placed in, and sure to end badly. So long as your good mother lived, all went well. There was perfect confidence between your parents, and her practical turn of mind and common-sense put the extinguisher on many an intended rash speculation. It was only after Mrs. Simpson's death that your father became so reckless, and flung his money right and left. He meant and hoped to make you a very rich man. No doubt, he threw out hints of the kind to you."

He had done so; and, foolish fellow that I was, I had carried myself more loftily in consequence, and given the idea that in me, my schoolfellows beheld a future millionaire.

I gave a movement of assent. I could not trust myself to speak, and I wished to play the man before Mr. Burford, though I was but a few months over sixteen, and felt at the moment as if my heart must break. But for those false hopes, the fall would not have been so great. As it was, I came down not only from my real position of a little while ago, but from the imaginary height to which my father's hints of vast future wealth had raised me.

"What can I do?" I asked. "No more school for me, no home to call my own, no human being to whom I have a right to turn for help if inclined to ask it."

"There is Miss Dorothy. You are her only relative on the side of the Simpsons, and she has money enough. But I am bound to tell you that your father borrowed a trifling sum from her, and that she is probably the most indignant of his creditors, because her debt is unsecured. It is only fifty pounds. Mr. Simpson wanted to borrow five hundred, I am sure believing that he should soon repay it."

"If I had any money of my own, I would pay cousin Dorothy, for she will talk and talk about that debt until every one will believe my father robbed her of thousands," I said.

"You have a trifle to come to you—five hundred pounds—from what was your mother's. It seemed almost too ridiculous to settle that at the time of her marriage, because everything looked so bright, and poverty and loss seemed all but impossible. It is well invested at five per cent., but you can only receive the interest till you are of age. It must be your nest-egg, Master John; and listen to me. You must set yourself to work in some way, and climb the ladder of success. When you are far enough up, and your pocket well lined, come to me and make an offer for Lint Hall back again. Nothing would please me better than to see the old place in your hands, Jack. I hope I shall live to put my feet under your mahogany there, my boy, as I used to do in your father's days. Cheer up, Jack! Remember two things. You have a friend in the old lawyer, and you are certain of bare bread without asking anybody's help," said Mr. Burford, with his hand on my shoulder and a fatherly look on his kindly face.

The words and the touch brought comfort. At first, I had counted on many friends, but in the face of lost position and certain poverty, they had seemed to vanish all at once. On which of them, when it came to the push, could I count for a night's shelter or a day's food? It was much to possess one true friend, and to be just removed from beggary.

My eyes became moist as I listened and felt the friendly pressure of his hand, and I no longer cared to hide my emotion from him.

"You are to come to us after the funeral, and stay till you have had a chance to turn round," said the lawyer.

But at that time he had not consulted Mrs. Burford.

Two days later he told me, in a hesitating way, and as if he were ashamed to meet my eye, that he was more sorry than he could express, but that, unknown to him, Mrs. Burford had invited two other visitors, each of whom would require a room, and there were only so many spare apartments in his house.

"But I have provided for you all the same, my dear Jack. My head clerk, a worthy fellow, but a bachelor, has nice rooms over the chemist's. I have engaged another sleeping apartment for you, and you and he can chum together for a little while. It will be far better than being alone, and Gordon is an excellent young fellow, and of a highly respectable family. I shall be your host, Jack, all the same."

I knew what Mr. Burford meant. He would meet all expenses, but it would not be all the same.

I was only a lad, yet a few days had made me years older in many respects, and I could read all that had passed under the lawyer's roof, as plainly as if it had been printed in a book and placed before my eyes.

Mrs. Burford, who had always been so eager to welcome me under her roof when I was accounted heir to Lint Hall, had no spare room for the impoverished lad who must find some mode of bread-winning and be only too thankful for the chance to work.

I looked back on former holiday-times, and thought of all the coaxing bestowed on the Jack Simpson of better days, to induce him to give up boyish society, and spend his leisure with Mrs. Burford's two girls and their child brother. I had thought her very kind to a motherless lad, and felt it pleasant to be counted as a member of the family; for Rose and Nelly Burford were, one my own age, and the other a year younger. They were bonny bright girls, and we had grown up as friends.

"They are all children together," Mrs. Burford had said, with a benevolent smile, only the last holidays, and in reply to a friend's remark as to the propriety of such close companionship between a tall lad and two girls who were speeding towards womanhood.

Nelly Burford had always been my favourite. At six years old, I promised that she should be my wife as soon as ever I grew big enough, and Mrs. Burford reminded me of this in a joking way from time to time as the years went on; so persistently, indeed, that I began to get a little tired of it, and other people looked in a meaning way at each other, as if what was all very well for six was not quite in such good taste with a boy of sixteen.

Mrs. Burford would not trouble me with such allusions again. She was now anxious to keep Rose and Nelly out of sight and reach of such an undesirable companion as myself. Alas! I understood who had obliged poor Mr. Burford to recall the invitation given straight from his own warm heart, and without previous consultation with the lady who ruled his household and himself. She could not see the possibility of worth and poverty being covered by the same hat, and when I once understood why she had so changed in her manner towards me, I could not have crossed her threshold or tasted bread at her table for the world.

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.