“I’ll tell you,” answered my father, pulling off his glasses. “Last Monday evening I had a talk with Harris at the Club. Harris is a man I respect. I consider Harris,” said my father with emphasis, “an honest man. He spoke of you. ‘Major,’ said he, ‘I think Charlie is too fine a fellow to be allowed to run to seed in a place like this?’ ‘I’ll own, Harris,’ said I, ‘that it has sometimes struck me my son might be doing better.’ He then asked me, why I didn’t get you into some house of business in London. This sort of questions are very easily put. There’s no difficulty in asking a subaltern why he isn’t a field-marshal, or a poor man why he don’t invent something wonderful, and make a fortune. ‘The fact is,’ said I, ‘I have no interest in the City. I don’t think,’ I said, quite forgetting my brother Tom for the moment, ‘that I have a single friend in business.’ ‘Well, major,’ said Harris, ‘your boy and I are old friends: he’s a thorough Englishman and a gentleman, and has done nothing that I can see to deserve expatriation. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I have a brother----’ ‘Faith Harris,’ said I, ‘I am truly obliged to you, but I can’t permit you to do for me what it is my duty, at all events, to try to do for myself. You’ve reminded me that I, too, have a brother who owns a private bank. By George!’”--(my father always swore like a gentleman)--“‘I’ll write to him! I have never asked either of my brothers a favour in my life; and I don’t suppose Tom will refuse me a first and last request.’ So, without saying a word to you, I sent a letter to Tom, asking his interest for you. I don’t know how it strikes you--but _I_ never could have expected so handsome a reply after so long a silence. Why, he has answered me by return of post,” said my father, peering at the date. “Oh, no doubt he is very kind,” I answered, wishing both him and old Harris at Jericho. “But I haven’t any particular wish to leave here.” “True, but this is no place for a young man. What’s your age? Three-and-twenty. My dear boy, at three-and-twenty William Pitt was First Lord of the Treasury. What you have to consider is, I am fifty years old” (50 + 12), “and at fifty a man is no longer young.” “That is true,” said I, somewhat impressed, for these were considerations that, so far as I could remember, had never before disturbed either of us. “When I die,” continued my father, “my pay dies with me. I have saved nothing--what have I to save? This is not so cheap a place to live in as people think. There was, indeed, a time when ten francs would purchase poultry enough to stock a hotel for a week, but now I can scarcely put a pair of fowls on my table for that money. When I die, what is to become of you? If you don’t think of that now, you will find yourself in a muddle some of these days. Tom can be the making of you if he likes. A hundred and fifty a year, let me tell you, is a very handsome beginning.” “Yes; but a banker’s clerk!”