“You expect I am going to give you a little fortune, eh?” he said, looking above his spectacles and pausing in the act of opening the lid.

“Not at all, sir.  You were good enough to speak of making me a present the other day, else, of course, I should not have thought of the matter.”  But Fred was of a hopeful disposition, and a vision had presented itself of a sum just large enough to deliver him from a certain anxiety.  When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—­ he did not necessarily conceive what—­would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time.  And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need:  as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole one.

The deep-veined hands fingered many bank-notes-one after the other, laying them down flat again, while Fred leaned back in his chair, scorning to look eager.  He held himself to be a gentleman at heart, and did not like courting an old fellow for his money.  At last, Mr. Featherstone eyed him again over his spectacles and presented him with a little sheaf of notes:  Fred could see distinctly that there were but five, as the less significant edges gaped towards him.  But then, each might mean fifty pounds.  He took them, saying—­

“I am very much obliged to you, sir,” and was going to roll them up without seeming to think of their value.  But this did not suit Mr. Featherstone, who was eying him intently.

“Come, don’t you think it worth your while to count ’em?  You take money like a lord; I suppose you lose it like one.”

“I thought I was not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, sir.  But I shall be very happy to count them.”

Fred was not so happy, however, after he had counted them.  For they actually presented the absurdity of being less than his hopefulness had decided that they must be.  What can the fitness of things mean, if not their fitness to a man’s expectations?  Failing this, absurdity and atheism gape behind him.  The collapse for Fred was severe when he found that he held no more than five twenties, and his share in the higher education of this country did not seem to help him.  Nevertheless he said, with rapid changes in his fair complexion—­

“It is very handsome of you, sir.”

“I should think it is,” said Mr. Featherstone, locking his box and replacing it, then taking off his spectacles deliberately, and at length, as if his inward meditation had more deeply convinced him, repeating, “I should think it handsome.”

“I assure you, sir, I am very grateful,” said Fred, who had had time to recover his cheerful air.

“So you ought to be.  You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter Featherstone is the only one you’ve got to trust to.”  Here the old man’s eyes gleamed with a curiously mingled satisfaction in the consciousness that this smart young fellow relied upon him, and that the smart young fellow was rather a fool for doing so.