work
and afraid to dirty their fingers."

"I'll do any honest work by which I can earn my bread, without being
dependent on friends."

"Any honest work, will you? I'll make you back out of that air. I'll bet
you won't begin where I did."

"Try me, sir, and see."

"Well, then, I'll give you good wages to go into my soap factory next
Monday morning. Ha! ha! that's honest work; but fellers of your cloth
don't do that sort of honest work."

"_I_ will, sir."

Mr. Bluff was utterly surprised, but he gave Dudley the situation, saying
that he reckoned the smell of soap-grease would send him out.

Dudley hardly knew what to make of his own boldness. But he only told his
mother that he had a situation with Mr. Bluff, and that he did not know
the precise nature of his duties. He was not ashamed of his work, but
afraid of giving her pain.

Monday morning he went early to the soap factory, stopping at the
tailor's on the way, and getting a pair of blue overalls that he had
ordered. It must be confessed that the smell of the factory disgusted him
at first, but he soon became interested. He saw that brains were used in
soap-making. He became more and more interested as he saw how accurate
some of the chemical processes were. He soon learned to cut the great
blocks of hard soap with wires; he watched with eager interest the use of
coloring matters in making the mottled soaps, and he soon became so
skilful that surly Mr. Bluff promoted him to some of the less unpleasant
parts of the work.

But there was much talk about it at first. Some of the young ladies who
had been useless all their lives, and who had come to think that
uselessness was necessary to respectability, were "surprised that Dudley
Crawford should follow so low a trade." But those very people never once
thought it disgraceful in Walter Whittaker to be a genteel loafer, living
off his father's hard-earned salary, and pretending that he was looking
for a situation. And I will not be too hard on Whittaker. I think if he
could have had a situation in which he could do nothing, and be paid well
for it, he would have been delighted. But he shunned Dudley. Partly
because he was afraid of compromising his own respectability, and partly
because he had sense enough to see that Dudley's honest eyes looked
through him, and saw what a humbug he was.

After a year Dudley's father's estate was settled, and owing to an
unexpected rise in some of the property, it was found tha