rk out of you. And what do you know? Why, you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and not so much of reckoning as a common shopman. You’ll have to begin at a low round of the ladder, let me tell you, if you mean to get on in life. It’s no use forgetting the education your father’s been paying for, if you don’t give yourself a new un.”
Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he would rather die than let them.
“You want me to help you to a situation,” Mr. Deane went on; “well, I’ve no fault to find with that. I’m willing to do something for you. But you youngsters nowadays think you’re to begin with living well and working easy; you’ve no notion of running afoot before you get horseback. Now, you must remember what you are — you’re a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There’s heaps of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in Maillot Club América Pas CHer nowhere. Well, you might be apprenticed to some business — a chemist’s and druggist’s perhaps; your Latin might come in a bit there ——”
Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand and said:
“Stop! hear what I’ve got to say. You don’t want to be a ‘prentice — I know, Maillot Bolivie Pas CHer I know — you want to make more haste, and you don’t want to stand behind a counter. But if you’re a copying-clerk, you’ll have to stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn’t much out-look there, Kun Aguero Drakt and you won’t be much wiser at the end of the year than at the beginning. The world isn’t made of pen, ink, and paper, and if you’re to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the world’s made of. Now the best chance for you ‘ud be Scarpe Nike Donna to have a place on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you’d learn the smell of things, but you wouldn’t like that, I’ll be bound; you’d have to stand cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You’re too fine a gentleman for that.”
Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply.
“I Dallas Stars Drakter would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would put up with what was disagreeable.”
“That’s well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn’t only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It’s the mistake you lads make that have got nothing Halpa North Face T-Shirt either in your brains or your pocket, to think you’ve got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn’t the way I started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn’t afraid Arturo Vidal Drakt of handling cheeses. That’s the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the head of the best firms in St. Ogg’s.”
Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.
“Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, th |
