A slight flush
came over his face as he read. It was produced by the following
announcement:--"If David Faux, son of Jonathan Faux, late of Gilsbrook,
will apply at the office of Mr. Strutt, attorney, of Rodham, he will hear
of something to his advantage."

"Father's dead!" exclaimed Mr. Freely, involuntarily. "Can he have left
me a legacy?"

CHAPTER III

Perhaps it was a result quite different from your expectations, that Mr.
David Faux should have returned from the West Indies only a few years
after his arrival there, and have set up in his old business, like any
plain man who has never travelled. But these cases do occur in life.
Since, as we know, men change their skies and see new constellations
without changing their souls, it will follow sometimes that they don't
change their business under those novel circumstances.

Certainly, this result was contrary to David's own expectations. He had
looked forward, you are aware, to a brilliant career among "the blacks";
but, either because they had already seen too many white men, or for some
other reason, they did not at once recognize him as a superior order of
human being; besides, there were no princesses among them. Nobody in
Jamaica was anxious to maintain David for the mere pleasure of his
society; and those hidden merits of a man which are so well known to
himself were as little recognized there as they notoriously are in the
effete society of the Old World. So that in the dark hints that David
threw out at the Oyster Club about that life of Sultanic self-indulgence
spent by him in the luxurious Indies, I really think he was doing himself
a wrong; I believe he worked for his bread, and, in fact, took to cooking
as, after all, the only department in which he could offer skilled
labour. He had formed several ingenious plans by which he meant to
circumvent people of large fortune and small faculty; but then he never
met with exactly the right circumstances. David's devices for getting
rich without work had apparently no direct relation with the world
outside him, as his confectionery receipts had. It is possible to pass a
great many bad half pennies and bad half-crowns, but I believe there has
no instance been known of passing a halfpenny or a half-crown as a
sovereign. A sharper can drive a brisk trade in this world: it is
undeniable that there may be a fine career for him, if he will dare
consequences; but David was too timid to be a sharper,