“Say he spends £150 a year. That leaves £5,850 a year. Take £800 for expenses and repairs--that leaves £5,000 a year. He has been going on like this for seventy years. Total accumulations, £420,000. At compound interest for all these years, it must reach two millions or so. Who is to have it?” “His descendants, I suppose.” “You, my brother Christopher, and myself. Two millions to divide between us. A very pretty fortune--very pretty indeed. Good-night, my boy--good-night.” He walked away cheerfully and with elastic step. “Accumulations--accumulations!” said Leonard, looking after him. “They are all for accumulations. Shall I, too, begin to calculate how much has been accumulated? And how if the accumulations turn out to be lost--wasted--gone--to somebody else?” CHAPTER VII THE CHILD OF SORROWS On a cold day, with a grey sky and an east wind, Leonard for the first time walked down the Commercial Road to call upon the newly-found cousins. It is a broad thoroughfare, but breadth does not always bring cheerfulness with it; even under a warm summer sun some thoroughfares cannot be cheerful. Nothing can relieve the unvarying depression of the Commercial Road. It is felt even by the children, who refuse to play in it, preferring the narrow streets running out of it; the depression is felt even by the drivers and the conductors of the tram-cars, persons who are generally superior to these influences. Here and there is a chapel, here and there is a model lodging-house or a factory, or a square or a great shop. One square was formerly picturesque when the Fair of the Goats was held upon it; now it has become respectable; the goats are gone, and the sight provokes melancholy. North and south of the road branch off endless rows of streets, crossed by streets laid out in a uniform check pattern. All these streets are similar and similarly situated, like Euclid’s triangles. One wonders how a resident finds his own house; nevertheless, the houses, though they are all turned out according to the same pattern, are neat and clean and well kept. The people in them are prosperous, according to their views on prosperity; the streets are cheerful, though the road to which they belong is melancholy. “Alas!” it says, “how can such a road as myself be cheerful? I lead to the Docks, and Limehouse, and Poplar, and Canning Town, and the Isle of Dogs.” Mr. Galley’s house was on the north side, conveniently near to a certain police-court, in which he practised daily, sometimes coming home with as much as three or four half-crowns in his pocket, sometimes with less--for competition among the professional solicitors in the police-courts is keen, and even fierce. Five shillings is a common fee for the defence of a prisoner, and rumour whispers that even this humble sum has to be shared secretly with a certain functionary who must be nameless.