Jacob Chandler sat one morning in his own room at his office, when a clerk came in and said Mrs. Chandler from Crabb was asking to see him. Cordiality had always subsisted between the two families, though they were not much together; Mrs. Chandler disliking their show; Mrs. Jacob and her daughters intensely despising one who wore black silk for best, and generally made her puddings with her own fingers. "So low-lived, you know, my dears," Mrs. Jacob would say, with a toss of her bedecked head. Jacob heard his clerk's announcement with annoyance; the lines on his brow grew deeper. He had always been a shrimp of a man, but he looked like a shrivelled one now. His black clothes sat loosely upon him; his white neckcloth, for he dressed like a parson, seemed too large for his thin neck. "Mrs. Chandler can come in," said he, after a few moments' hesitation. "But say I am busy." She came in, putting back her veil: she had worn a plain-shaped bonnet with a white border ever since her husband died. It suited her meek, kind, and somewhat homely face, on which the brown hair, streaked with grey, was banded. "Jacob, I am sorry to disturb you, especially as you are busy; but I have wanted to speak to you for some time now and have not liked to come," she began, taking the chair that stood near the table at which he sat. "It is about Tom." "What about him?" asked Jacob. "Has he been up to any mischief?" "Mischief! Tom! Why, Jacob, I hardly think there can be such another young man as he, for steadiness and good conduct; and, I may say, for kindness. I have never heard anything against him. What I want to ask you is, when you think of making a change?" "A change?" echoed Jacob, as if the words puzzled him, biting away at the feather of his pen. "A change?" "Is it not time that he should be taken into the business? I--I thought--and Tom I know also thought, Jacob--that you would have done it when he was twenty-one." "Oh, did you?" returned Jacob, civilly. "He is twenty-four, you know, now, Jacob, and naturally wishes to get forward in life. I am anxious that he should; and I think it is time--forgive me for saying it, Jacob--that something was settled." "I was thinking of raising Tom's salary," coolly observed Jacob; "of giving him, say, fifty pounds a-year more. Valentine has been bothering me to do the same by him; so I suppose I must." The fixed colour on Mrs. Chandler's thin cheeks grew a shade deeper. "But, Jacob, it was his father's wish, you know, that he should be taken into partnership, should succeed to his own share of the business; and I thought you would have arranged it ere this. An increase of salary is not the thing at all: it is not that that is in question." "Nothing can be so bad for a young man as to make him his own master too early," cried Jacob. "I've known it ruin many a one."