ainst having more money in my hands than
I know what to do with. It has always brought me bad luck. And what
is very hard,--the bad luck stays, but the money goes. There was that
splendid sum I made at Gatesboro'. You should have seen me counting it
over. I could not have had a prouder or more swelling heart if I had
been, that great man Mr. Elwes the miser. And what bad luck it brought
me, and how it all frittered itself away! Nothing to show for it but a
silk ladder and an old hurdy-gurdy, and I sold them at half price. Then
when I had the accident, which cost me this eye, the railway people
behaved so generously, gave me L120,--think of that! And before three
days the money was all gone!"

"How was that?" said George, half-amused, half-pained,--"stolen
perhaps?"

"Not so," answered Waife, somewhat gloomily, "but restored. A poor dear
old man, who thought very ill of me, and I don't wonder at it,--was
reduced from great wealth to great poverty. While I was laid up, my
landlady read a newspaper to me, and in that newspaper was an account
of his reverse and destitution. But I was accountable to him for the
balance of an old debt, and that, with the doctor's bills, quite covered
my L120. I hope he does not think quite so ill of me now. But the money
brought good luck to him, rather than to me. Well, sir, if you were
now to give me money, I should be on the look-out for some mournful
calamity. Gold is not natural to me. Some day, however, by and by, when
you are inducted into your living, and have become a renowned preacher,
and have plenty to spare, with an idea that you will feel more
comfortable in your mind if you had done something royal for the
basketmaker, I will ask you to help me to make up a sum, which I am
trying by degrees to save,--an enormous sum, almost as much as I paid
away from my railway compensation: I owe it to the lady who lent it to
release Sophy from an engagement which I--certainly without any remorse
of conscience--made the child break."

"Oh, yes! What is the amount? Let me at least repay that debt."

"Not yet. The lady can wait; and she would be pleased to wait, because
she deserves to wait: it would be unkind to her to pay it off at
once. But in the meanwhile if you could send me a few good books for
Sophy,--instructive, yet not very, very dry,-and a French dictionary,
I can teach her French when the winter days close in. You see I am not
above being paid, sir. But, Mr. Morley, there is a