“If you like another two pounds for that 'ere cat, governor, I'm game to pay you. It's the best thing that ever happened to me. Every one's wanting to see 'em, and there's the old woman dressed up in her Sunday clothes a-sitting in the parlor as proud as a peacock a showing of 'em off. The house ain't been so quiet since I married. Them animals would be cheap to me at a ten pound note. They'll get you no end of orders, I can tell you.” The orders, indeed, came in much faster than Frank could fulfill them, although he worked twelve hours a day; laying aside all other work, however, for three hours in order to devote himself to the shop cases, which were to be chef d'oeuvres. CHAPTER VII: AN OLD FRIEND For three months Frank passed a quiet and not unpleasant life with the old naturalist in Ratcliff Highway. The latter took a great liking to him, and treated him like a son rather than an assistant. The two took their meals together now, and Frank's salary had been raised from twelve to eighteen shillings a week. So attractive had the cases in the windows proved that quite a little crowd was generally collected round them, and the business had greatly augmented. The old naturalist was less pleased at this change than most men would have been in his position. He had got into a groove and did not care to get out of it. He had no relatives or any one dependent on him, and he had been well content to go on in a jog trot way, just paying his expenses of shop and living. The extra bustle and push worried rather than pleased him. “I am an old man,” he said to Frank one day, as after the shop was closed they sat over their tea. “I have no motive in laying by money, and had enough for my wants. I was influenced more by my liking for your face and my appreciation of your talent, than by any desire of increasing my business. I am taking now three times as much as I did before. Now I should not mind, indeed, I should be glad, if I thought that you would succeed me here as a son would do. I would gladly take you into partnership with me, and you would have the whole business after my death. But I know, my boy, that it wouldn't do. I know that the time will come when you will not be content with so dull a life here. You will either get an offer from some West End house which would open higher prospects to you, or you will be wandering away as a collector. In any case you would not stop here, of that I am quite sure, and therefore do not care, as I should have done, had you been my son, for the increase of the business. As it is, lad, I could not even wish to see you waste your life here.”