"Perhaps a little of that;--though, by Jove, it isn't often I do that kind of thing. I don't know a fellow who works harder for his wife and children than I do. But when one sees such things all round one,--a fellow utterly smashed here who had a string of hunters yesterday, and another fellow buying a house in Piccadilly and pulling it down because it isn't big enough, who was contented with a little box at Hornsey last summer, one doesn't quite know how to keep one's legs." "If you want to learn a lesson look at the two men, and see where the difference lies. The one has had some heart about him, and the other has been a coward." Parker scratched his head, balanced himself on the hind legs of his stool, and tacitly acknowledged the truth of all that his enterprising friend said to him. "Has old Wharton come down well?" at last he asked. "I have never said a word to old Wharton about money," Lopez replied,--"except as to the cost of this election I was telling you of." "And he wouldn't do anything in that?" "He doesn't approve of the thing itself. I don't doubt but that the old gentleman and I shall understand each other before long." "You've got the length of his foot." "But I don't mean to drive him. I can get along without that. He's an old man, and he can't take his money along with him when he goes the great journey." "There's a brother, Lopez,--isn't there?" "Yes,--there's a brother; but Wharton has enough for two; and if he were to put either out of his will it wouldn't be my wife. Old men don't like parting with their money, and he's like other old men. If it were not so I shouldn't bother myself coming into the city at all." "Has he enough for that, Lopez?" "I suppose he's worth a quarter of a million." "By Jove! And where did he get it?" "Perseverance, sir. Put by a shilling a day, and let it have its natural increase, and see what it will come to at the end of fifty years. I suppose old Wharton has been putting by two or three thousand out of his professional income, at any rate for the last thirty years, and never for a moment forgetting its natural increase. That's one way to make a fortune." "It ain't rapid enough for you and me, Lopez." "No. That was the old-fashioned way, and the most sure. But, as you say, it is not rapid enough; and it robs a man of the power of enjoying his money when he has made it. But it's a very good thing to be closely connected with a man who has already done that kind of thing. There's no doubt about the money when it is there. It does not take to itself wings and fly away." "But the man who has it sticks to it uncommon hard." "Of course he does;--but he can't take it away with him." "He can leave it to hospitals, Lopez. That's the devil!" "Sexty, my boy, I see you have taken an outlook into human life which does you credit. Yes, he can leave it to hospitals. But why does he leave it to hospitals?" "Something of being afraid about his soul, I suppose."