’How are you getting on with your learning, Wat?  You are pretty constant at it.  If there’s anything in application, you should succeed.’

‘It’s pretty tough work, though, when a fellow’s getting older.’

‘Older,’ repeated the old man, with a quiet chuckle.  ‘How old are you?’

‘Nineteen.’

’Nineteen, are you?  Well, you look it.  You’ve vastly improved of late.  I suppose you think yourself rather an ill-used sort of person—­ill used by me, I mean?’

‘I don’t think you pay me enough, if you mean that,’ said Walter, with a little laugh; ‘but I’m going to ask a rise.’

’Why have you stayed here so long, if that is your mind?  Nobody was compelling you.’

‘No; but I’ve got used to the place, and I like it,’ returned Walter frankly; but he bent his eyes on his books, as if there was something more behind his words which he did not care should be revealed.

‘I see—­it’s each man for himself in this world, and deil tak’ the hindmost, as they say; but I don’t think you’ll be hindmost.  Suppose, now, you were to find yourself the boss of this concern, what would you do?’

‘Carry it on as best I could, sir,’ answered Walter, in surprise.

‘Ay, but how?  I suppose you think you’d reorganise it all?’ said the old man rather sarcastically.

‘Well, I would,’ admitted Walter frankly.

‘In what way?  Just tell me how you’d do it?’

’Well, I’d be off, somehow or other, with all these old debts, sir, and then I’d begin a new business on different principles.  I couldn’t stand so much carrying over of old scores to new accounts, if I were on my own hook.  You never know where you are, and it’s cruel to the poor wretches who are always owing; they can’t have any independence.  Its a poor way of doing business.’

’Oh, indeed!  You are not afraid to speak your mind, my young bantam.  And pray, where did you pick up all these high and mighty notions?’

‘They may be high and mighty, sir, but they’re common-sense,’ responded Walter, without perturbation.  ’You know yourself how you’ve been worried to death almost, and what a watching these slippery customers need.  It is not worth the trouble.’

‘Is it not?  Pray, how do you know that?’ inquired the old man, his eyes glittering as he asked the question.  ’I don’t know, of course, but you always say you are a poor man,’ replied Walter, as he put down the figures of a sum on his slate.

’But you don’t believe it, eh?  Perhaps that’s why you’ve stuck to me like a leech so long,’ he said, with his most disagreeable smile; but Walter never answered.  They had been together now for some years, and there was a curious sort of understanding—­a liking, even—­between them; and of late Walter had taken several opportunities of speaking his mind with a candour which really pleased his strange old master, though he always appeared to be in a state of indignation.