"Not hard if you get the price of your work at last. But you can have your choice. A moderate fixed income can now be had by any barrister early in life,--by any barrister of fair parts and sound acquirements. There are more barristers now filling salaried places than practising in the courts." "But those places are given by favour." "No; not so generally,--or if by favour, by that sort of favour which is as likely to come to you as to another. Such places are not given to incompetent young men because their fathers and mothers ask for them. But won't you fill your glass?" "I am doing very well, thank you." "You'll do better if you'll fill your glass, and let me have the bottle back. But you are thinking of the good old historical days when you talk of barristers having to wait for their incomes. There has been a great change in that respect,--for the better, as you of course will think. Now-a-days a man is taken away from his boat-racing and his skittle-ground to be made a judge. A little law and a great fund of physical strength--that is the extent of the demand." And Mr. Prendergast plainly showed by the tone of his voice that he did not admire the wisdom of this new policy of which he spoke. "But I suppose a man must work five years before he can earn anything," said Herbert, still despondingly; for five years is a long time to an expectant lover. "Fifteen years of unpaid labour used not to be thought too great a price to pay for ultimate success," said Mr. Prendergast, almost sighing at the degeneracy of the age. "But men in those days were ambitious and patient." "And now they are ambitious and impatient," suggested Herbert. "Covetous and impatient might perhaps be the truer epithets," said Mr. Prendergast with grim sarcasm.