CHAPTER II.

No Blessing.

"WHAT an odd view mother takes of life!" thought John, as he went whistling along the road towards the house of Justice Burns, to whom his uncle had been butler, and in whose hands he had left his savings. "Mother always seems to feel as if she were on a journey, with her staff in her hand, and her bundle on her back, though she has bided these thirty years in that little cottage where I was born. She's always a-thinking of getting on to another world, and perhaps since father has gone there that's natural enough, for he was the light of her eyes. But I take it this world is a very good world, and I'm in no hurry to leave it. I mean to settle down and thrive in that little public-house which is to be let at such a bargain, drive a good business, make plenty of money, and then ask little Dinah to come and share my home. A lucky legacy that of my uncle's, and come at a lucky time. Mother may say what she likes, there's nothing better in life than a little hard cash—except a great deal of it!" And John Carey laughed gaily to himself as he pulled the bell at the Justice's door.

"What do you want here?" asked the liveried servant who answered the bell.

"I want to see Justice Burns. I'm the nephew of his late butler, and he has money of mine in his hands."

"Ah! You're the nephew of poor old Carey, are you?" said the footman, relaxing into an easy sociable manner. "Come in and sit down in the hall. You can't see master yet, for he's taking his breakfast."

As John entered the hall, he might have guessed that a meal was going on in the house, from the very savoury scent which proceeded out of the dining-room.

"Breakfast! Why it's nigh noonday!" cried honest John, who had already taken his dinner, "It's plain the Justice ain't up with the lark."

"You wouldn't be up with the lark neither, if you had such nights as he has," said the servant, who was inclined for a gossip. "The Justice is a martyr to gout—suffers misery, he does, and makes every one about him miserable too, I suppose to keep him company."

"I should say his gout doesn't take away his appetite," observed John, glancing at a steaming dish which the butler was carrying in at that moment to his master.

The footman shrugged his shoulders. "There's the mischief," said he. "The more the Justice suffers, the more he eats; the more he eats, the more he suffers; but he can't do without his turtle and venison, his sauces and wines. Doctor and cook, he keeps both of them at work. I'd not have such legs as he has for ten thousand pounds a year; they're swelled as big as two, and he can hardly get up from his chair; we've to wheel him from one room to another."

"'Twould have been better, maybe, for the Justice if he'd had to follow the plough at sunrise, and get a good appetite for his bread and cheese," observed John, glancing down with some satisfaction at his own active powerful limbs, that had never suffered from an hour's disease.

"Oh! I often say that it would have been a good thing for him, if he'd had to work hard for his bread, clip hedges or break stones on the road," said the talkative footman. "But there's his bell, I must answer it at once, for he's mighty easily put out when a fit of the gout is upon him."

"Well, maybe hard cash, even a great deal of it, is not always a blessing," was the thought which John Carey had leisure to turn well over in his mind during the half-hour which he had to wait while the Justice was eating and drinking in misery and pain, wasting on gluttonous indulgence that money for which he would one day have to render a strict account.

At last the Justice was ready to see John Carey in the study. The young countryman, as he trod the Turkey-carpet of that luxurious room, looked with mingled pity and contempt on the owner of so much wealth, bolstered up with cushions, and swathed in flannels, with the peevishness of suffering written upon his red bloated face. John could not help thinking of the cheerful patience of his own father during sickness, and the thankful pleasure with which he had received every little comfort, as a direct gift from his God.

"What's this you want—your uncle's legacy? I don't know why he should have bothered me with a petty matter like this," said the Justice peevishly, when John had explained his business.

"Thirty pounds—is that the sum? Yes, I remember; I was writing out a cheque for it last night when I was taken so ill that I could scarcely hold the pen in my fingers."

The Justice looked as if it were a labour and pain to him now to open the desk before him with his swollen gouty hands, and he had hardly taken out the cheque when his servant ushered in the doctor.

"There—go, they'll cash it for you in Argyll Street; I can't be plagued with business," said the Justice hastily, motioning to John to quit his presence.

Young Carey hurriedly put the cheque into his pocket-book and left the house, feeling that he would not change places with that wretched Dives, who lived but for self, even if there were no danger of the "place of torment" succeeding the state of luxury of him who fared sumptuously every day.

"I'm thirsty, and I've a long trudge before me," said John to himself. "I'll just step into the little inn yonder, and refresh myself with a tumbler of beer."

John found in the "White Hart," Sam Soames, a man with whom he had but a slight acquaintance, "the less the better," as Mrs. Carey often had said. No one who looked at Sam as he sat with his elbows rubbing through his sleeves, with his battered hat, dirty shirt, and poverty-stricken aspect, would have guessed that he was a skilled workman, who could win two guineas a week. Sam had earned a great deal of money in his time, but as fast as he made it, the gold seemed to slip through his fingers. It might be said of him in the forcible language of Scripture, "he earneth wages to put into a bag with holes." *

* Haggai i. 6.

Never had John's father, through all his long sickness, when he had no power to earn a shilling, known the actual want which was staring in the face of this man, who had no one to blame but himself that he was not one of the most thriving workmen in the town where he lived. Money had come—and had gone—a blessing was not upon it!

John Carey was of a kindly, sociable temper, such as scarcely suited his nickname of "young lion." Worthless as he knew Sam Soames to be, he pitied his wretched condition, and was willing to do him a kindness. He treated Soames to beer, and while the two men drank together, John chatted freely with his companion over his own affairs. Carey told Soames of the legacy which had been left by his uncle, and of the cheque for thirty pounds which he was going to get cashed in London. In his openness of heart, the "young lion" told him moreover of his own plan of partnership with Brace, and invited Sam to come and look in on him sometimes when he should be landlord of the "Jolly Ploughboys." This Sam Soames very readily promised to do, hoping, no doubt, that his easy-tempered friend would not be hard upon him when the time for reckoning should come.

"It was too bad in me to talk about my good-luck to that poor ruined fellow," thought honest John, as, after paying for what he and his companion had taken, he started off on his long walk to London; "it was like making a hungry dog look in through the window at a well-filled larder, when he has not so much as a bone to grind between his jaws. Well, well, if Sam Soames had my thirty pounds to-day, there would not be thirty pence of it left by Sunday. He's one of them chaps that no one can help; hard cash—much or little of it—would be no blessing to him."

And with this reflection John dismissed the subject from his mind, and took to whistling again.

The "young lion" was scarcely at all tired by his ten miles' walk to London. He was puzzled, however, to find his way through its labyrinth of streets, crossing each other in every direction, and found the noise and bustle of the mighty city very distracting.

"I've heard of some one who said that he'd rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak," muttered John to himself, "and I'm much of his mind. I'd think a fortune dearly earned if I'd to go moiling and toiling all my days in a racket like this. But different folk have different tastes; maybe there are some who like it, and would rather see carriages rolling along, than a field of fine wheat bending as the wind blows across it. I'm not one of that sort—that's all."

John had some trouble in finding Argyll Street, and it was an hour later than he expected when he reached the bank at last. The young peasant felt a little shy on entering the large room in which were so many clerks at their desks.

"Here be a lot of fine gentlemen," thought John, "who have nothing to do from morning till night but count up money, and shovel out gold. How tired one would get of the clink of it, and the endless summing and reckoning! I'd rather by far sow beans!"

John's rough jacket and hob-nailed shoes seemed to himself out of place in the bank. Anything like transacting business was new to him, and the "young lion" looked awkward and shy as he advanced, cap in hand, to the front of one of the desks, behind which stood a clerk, who appeared to John to be a very fine gentleman indeed.

The clerk inquired what was his business.

"I want to get this here cheque cashed," said John, pulling his pocket-book from his breast-pocket, and then fumbling in it to find his valuable paper. It was some little time before he could lay his strong clumsy fingers upon it, and put it down on the desk.

"Who gave you this?" asked the clerk.

"Justice Burns, it's for thirty pounds; you see my uncle, he left me a legacy, and—"

The man of business cut the speech of the countryman short.

"This cheque is of no use," he said, pushing it back towards John, "there is no signature on it."

Carey stared in blank amazement, first at the speaker, then at the cheque. What the clerk had said was true enough; the gouty Justice in drawing out the cheque had forgotten to sign his name.

John rubbed his heated forehead, and looked perplexed. "What's to be done?" said he.

"You must take back the cheque and get it signed, of course," said the clerk; "as it is, it is of no more use than blank paper." And having thus summarily dismissed the business, the clerk turned away to attend to a gentleman who had just entered the office.

"This ben't the First of April, or I should have thought the Justice had chosen to play me a trick," thought John, as, somewhat mortified and provoked, he replaced the cheque in his pocket-book, and then quitted the bank.

"He'd no right to send me on such a fool's errand as this because he'd a twinge in his gouty foot. I'll tell him my mind when I see him to-morrow. I'll just go and refresh myself now a bit; for an hour of walking about this Babel takes more out of a fellow than a day spent in hedging and ditching. I'll buy the few things I want, and then get home as fast as my legs will carry me. I shall be ashamed to tell Dick Brace that I've lost a day's work, and had a twenty miles' walk for my pains; 'twill always be a-coming up as a joke against me."