“You’ll just step up to Torry’s now, Mr Spence, will you?” said Mr Deane, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Tom’s ears. “Well, Tom,” said Mr Deane, when they were alone, turning his substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his snuff-box; “what’s the business, my boy; what’s the business?” Mr Deane, who had heard from his wife what had passed the day before, thought Tom was come to appeal to him for some means of averting the sale. “I hope you’ll excuse me for troubling you, uncle,” said Tom, colouring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a certain proud independence in it; “but I thought you were the best person to advise me what to do.” “Ah!” said Mr Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Tom with new attention, “let us hear.” “I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money,” said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution. “A situation?” said Mr Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff with elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a most provoking habit. “Why, let me see, how old are you?” said Mr Deane, as he threw himself backward again. “Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen,” said Tom, hoping his uncle noticed how much beard he had. “Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I think?” “But I don’t think I could get any money at that for a long while, could I?” “That’s true; but people don’t get much money at anything, my boy, when they’re only sixteen. You’ve had a good deal of schooling, however; I suppose you’re pretty well up in accounts, eh? You understand book keeping?” “No,” said Tom, rather falteringly. “I was in Practice. But Mr Stelling says I write a good hand, uncle. That’s my writing,” added Tom, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday. “Ah! that’s good, that’s good. But, you see, the best hand in the world’ll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk’s, if you know nothing of book-keeping,—nothing of accounts. And a copying-clerk’s a cheap article. But what have you been learning at school, then?” Mr Deane had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had no precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools. “We learned Latin,” said Tom, pausing a little between each item, as if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his memory,—“a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had one day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons; and there were several other books we either read or learned out of,—English Poetry, and Horæ Paulinæ and Blair’s Rhetoric, the last half.”