Would his uncle give him a place in the bank? it would be very dull, prosy work, he thought writing there, forever, to the loud ticking of a time-piece.
He preferred some other way of getting rich.But at last there was a change:
his uncle took a pen and wrote something with a flourish at the end.
`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 fractions.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 felt 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 Horae Paulinae, and Blair's Rhetoric, the last Half.'
Mr Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth: he felt in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New Tariff and found how many commodities were imported of which they knew nothing:
like a cautious man of business, he was not going to speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience.But the presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so successful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another war, since people would no longer wear hair powder, it would be well to put a tax upon Latin as luxury much run upon by the higher classes and not telling at all on the ship-owing department.But, for what he knew, the Horae Paulinae might be something less neutral.On the whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion towards poor Tom.
`Well,' he said, at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, `you've had three years at these things - you must be pretty strong in 'em.Hadn't you better take up some line where they'll come in handy?'
Tom coloured and burst out, with new energy, `I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle.I don't like Latin and those things.I don't know what I could do with them unless Iwent as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough for that:
besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers.I don't want to be that sort of person.I should like to enter into some business where I can get on - a manly business, where I should have to look after things and get credit for what I did.And I shall want to keep my mother and sister.'
`Ah, young gentleman,' said Mr Deane, with that tendency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, `that's sooner said than done - sooner said than done.'
`But didn't you get on in that way, uncle?' said Tom, a little irritated that Mr Deane did not enter more rapidly into his views.`I mean, didn't you rise from one place to another through your abilities and good conduct?'
`Ay, ay, sir,' said Mr Deane, spreading himself in his chair a little, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his own career.
