There is something jovial when you are young in preparing for a long voyage and for totally altered circumstances in life, especially when the surroundings are in themselves not melancholy.  A mother weeping over a banished child may be sad enough,—­going as an exile when there is no hope of a return, But here among the Shands, with whom sons and daughters were plentiful, and with whom the feelings were of a useful kind, and likely to wear well, rather than of a romantic nature, the bustle, the purchasings, the arrangements, and the packings generally had in them a pleasantness of activity with no disagreeable accompaniments.

‘I do hope you will wear them, Dick,’ the mother said with something like a sob in her voice; but the tenderness came not from the approaching departure, but from her fear that the thick woollen drawers on which she was re-sewing all the buttons, should be neglected,—­after Dick’s usual fashion.  ’Mr. Caldigate I hope you will see that he wears them.  He looks strong, but indeed he is not.’  Our hero who had always regarded his friend as a bull for strength of constitution generally, promised that he would be attentive to Dick’s drawers.

‘You may be sure that I shall wear them,’ said Dick; ’but the time will come when I shall probably wear nothing else, so you had better make the buttons firm.’

Everything was to be done with strict economy, but yet there was plenty of money for purchases.  There always is at such occasions.  The quantity of clothes got together seemed to be more than any two men could ever wear; and among it all there were no dress-coats and no dress-trousers:  or, if either of them had such articles, they were smuggled.  The two young men were going out as miners, and took a delight in preparing themselves to be rough.  Caldigate was at first somewhat modest in submitting his own belongings to the females of the establishment but that feeling soon wore off, and the markings and mendings, and buttonings and hemmings went on in a strictly impartial manner as though he himself were a chick out of the same brood.

‘What will you do?’ said the doctor, ’if you spend your capital and make nothing?’

‘Work for wages,’ said Dick.  ’We shall have got, at any rate, enough experience out of our money to be able to do that.  Men are getting 10s. a-day.’

‘But you’d have to go on doing that always,’ said the mother.

’Not at all.  Of course it’s a life of ups and downs.  A man working for wages can put half what he earns into a claim, so that when a thing does come up trumps at last, he will have his chance.  I have read a good deal about it now.  There is plenty to be got if a man only knows how to keep it.’

‘Drinking is the worst,’ said the doctor.

‘I think I can trust myself for that,’ said Dick, whose hand at the moment was on a bottle of whisky, and who had been by no means averse to jollifications at Cambridge.  ’A miner when he’s at work should never drink.’