"Not the slightest, so long as you bought them with your own money. Only don't do too much of that sort of thing. When you spend money, spend it to advantage--in something that will last, or will make more money. Spending money in flowers is folly; in two days flowers and money are gone. You can look at them in gardens and shop windows, then you get all your pleasure for nothing. That's the wise plan. Costs nothing for looking, Jeremiah." "You are quite right. I'll bear in mind what you say, and profit by it." "That pleases me. What I like is obedience--blind obedience--and I will have it from those in my control. So--you're thinking of marriage, eh? A wife is an expensive toy." "Not when you've got the right one! Likely as not it keeps a man out of mischief." "So long as you've got the right one! Your mother said something to me; has she told you of it?" Jeremiah considered a moment, and for once in his life was candid. "Yes," he said, "she told me of it." "Sit down, Jeremiah." The astute young man obeyed in silence, and inwardly congratulated himself. "Things are going on swimmingly," he thought; "the fish is as good as in my net already." While Miser Farebrother, gazing on Jeremiah, thought, "I'll bind him tight; I'll bind him tight!" Presently he spoke. "You have been a long time in my service, and are acquainted with my business." "I know all the ins and outs of it," said Jeremiah. "I've got it at my fingers' ends." Miser Farebrother sighed. Humbly as Jeremiah's words were spoken, the miser felt that his managing clerk had him in his power. Well, the best plan was to put chains around him, and what chains so tight and binding as matrimony? "If I came to grief, Jeremiah, you could set up in business for yourself?" "Yes," said Jeremiah, boldly; "and make a fortune. But you come to grief! No, sir; not while I am with you." "It is my misfortune," continued the miser, "and your good luck, that I am ill and weak, and unable to give the proper personal attention to my affairs." "Why say 'misfortune,' sir? It may be your good luck as well as mine." "But it is as I say," cried Miser Farebrother, testily. "Very well, sir. Then what a shrewd man would do is to make the best of it." Jeremiah's cue was not to cross or vex his master; to assert himself up to a certain point, but to lead the miser to believe that in him, Jeremiah, a wily master had a suitable tool, who, for a prospective advantage, would devote himself hand and foot, body and soul, to his employer's interest. "That is all that is left to me," groaned Miser Farebrother--"to make the best of it. Jeremiah Pamflett," he said, abruptly, "were I in your place and you in mine, how would you act?" "Under precisely similar circumstances?" "Yes, under precisely similar circumstances."