“’Bravo, Jeremy! My uncle was right, after all: you ought to have been a lawyer; you are first-class at figures. I congratulate you on your management of the estates.” “My system is simple,” answered Jeremy. Whenever there is any money to spare I buy something with it then you are not likely to spend it. Then, when I have things enough—waggons, oxen, horses, what not,—I sell them and buy some land; that can’t run away. If you only do that sort of thing long enough, you will grow rich at last.” “Sweetly simple, certainly. Well, five thousand will go a Iong way towards stocking a farm or something in South America or wherever we make up our minds to go, and then I don’t think that we need draw on my uncle any more. It is hardly fair to drain him so. Old Alston will come with us, I think, and will put in another five thousand. He told me some time ago that he was getting tired of South Africa with its Boers and blacks, in his old age and had a fancy to make a start in some other place. I will write to him to-night. What hotel is he staying at in Maritzburg? the Royal, isn’t it? And then I vote we clear in the spring.” “Right you are, my hearty!” “But I say, Jeremy, I really should advise you to think twice before you come. A fine, upstanding young man like you should not waste his sweetness on the desert air of Mexico, or any such place. You should go home and be admired of the young women—they appreciate a great big chap like you—and make a good marriage, and rear up a large family in a virtuous, respectable, and Jones-like fashion. I am a sort of wandering comet without the shine; but, I repeat, I see no reason why you should play tail to a second-class comet.” “Married! get married! I! No, thank you, my boy. Look you, Ernest, in the words of the prophet, ‘When a wise man openeth his eye, and seeth a thing, verily he shutteth it not up again.’ Now, I opened my eye and saw one or two things in the course of our joint little affair—Eva, you know.” Ernest winced at the name.