“You will have your dividends, if we are lucky enough ever to get any,” answered Mr. Stewart; “and, should you entertain my proposal, I promise you the secretaryship also; that will yield you a thousand a year. Perhaps you will consider the matter, Mr. Dudley, and let me know your decision before Saturday next. You have my address. I shall be returning to town to-morrow.” And the great man rose to go, having, as he felt confident, settled the business which had brought him down into Hertfordshire. Arthur accompanied him to the outer door. “What a lovely place you have!” said the director, looking round, approvingly. “A spot I should covet, if it were twenty miles nearer London.” “It is very inaccessible,” Arthur agreed. This light kind of conversation appeared to him very much like the political small talk to which a surgeon will sometimes treat a patient next day after an operation. “It would not be exactly convenient for a man who wished to be in town every day at eight o’clock,” suggested Mr. Stewart; “but it is very charming, nevertheless. Good-morning!” And this man, who was between seventy and eighty years of age, started off to walk back to Kemms Park, as briskly as Arthur himself might have done. “Old enough to have given up grubbing after money,” muttered Arthur, criticizing his visitor’s retreating figure; as though a man ever fancied himself old enough to relinquish the occupation of his life, so long as he could hold a pen or dictate a letter, bring a bill into Parliament, or buy to advantage on the Stock Exchange. Old enough! Is it not only the young, now-a-days, who feel old and cry aloud for rest; who grow weary and tired of the heat and burden of the noontide? When the back has become used to the pack, and the world’s collar has ceased to gall, the horse, let it be ever so old, will amble along the familiar road, without whip or spur to urge him on. It is the colts who turn aside, who long for the idle days and the green pastures, for the meadows where the holiday-folks are making merry, and the silvery streams flowing through the midst. CHAPTER IX. A FEW BILLS. Hitherto, Squire Dudley had, since his connection with Mr. Black, experienced no shortness of money. The man who spends two years’ income in one, does not, as a rule, find the pecuniary shoe begin to pinch until he enters on the second twelvemonth, and realises to himself the truth that it is impossible both to spend and to have. There is a time of plenty during which the prodigal wastes his substance and takes life easily, and then after that comes the season of famine, when he is fain to content himself with very roots and husks—when, having once entertained like a prince, he is compelled to expiate his folly in retirement, and refresh his spirit with herbs of the field, and water from the brook.