The Argosy — page 264: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

248 Edina. “T shall only be too happy to stay this afternoon, sir.” “Very well,” said Mr. Preen, ringing his bell for the managing clerk. ‘ And you shall then have an answer.” Charles was put to work by Mr. Stroud: who came and looked at him three or four times while -he was doing the copying. He wrote slowly ; the consequence of his super-extra care, his intensely earnest wish to succeed : but his writing was good and clear. “TI shall write quickly in a day or two, when I am used to it,” he said, looking up: and there was hope in his face as well as his tone. _ Mr. Preen chanced to be standing by. The writing would do, he decided ; and Mr. Stroud was told to engage him. To begin with, his salary was to be fifteen shillings a week: in a short while—as soon, indeed, as his suiting them was an assured fact—it would be raised to eighteen. He was to enter on the morrow. , “Where do you live?” curtly questioned Mr. Stroud. “Just beyond Kennington.” “Take care that you are punctual to time. Nine o'clock is the hour for the copying clerks. You are expected to be at work by that time, therefore you must get here before the clock strikes.” A very easy condition, as it seemed to Charles Raynor, in his elation ~ of spirit. A copying clerk in a lawyer’s office at fifteen or eighteen shillings a week! Had anyone told him a year back he would be capable of accepting so degrading a post—as he would then have deemed it—he had surely said the world must have turned itself upside down first. Vow he went home with a joyous step and elated heart, hardly knowing whether he trod on his head or his heels. And there, at Laurel Cottage, they held quite a jubilee. Fifteen shillings a week, added to the previous narrow income of twenty, seemed at the moment to look very like riches. Charles had formed all kinds of mental resolutions as he walked home: to treat his clothes tenderly lest they should get shabby; scarcely to tread on his boots that they might not wear out: and to make his daily dinner on bread and cheese, carried in his pocket from home. Ah, these resolves are good, and more than good ; and generous, wholesome-hearted young fellows are proud to make them in the time of need. But in their inexperience they cannot foresee the long, wearing, depressing struggle that the years must entail, during which the efforts and the privation must be persevered in. And it is well they cannot, It wanted a quarter to nine in the morning, when Charles entered the office, warm with the speed at which he had walked. He did all that he was put to do, and did it correctly. If Mr. Stroud did not praise, he did not grumble. When told at one o'clock that he might go to dinner, Charles made © his way to the more sheltered parts in the precincts of the Temple, and surreptitiously eat the bread and cheese that he had brought comicbooks.com