The girl had just removed the supper things. We have supper rather
early, because I like a long evening. "Now, Eliza," I said, "you take
your work,--your sewing, or whatever it may be,--and I will take my
work. Yes, I've brought it with me, and it's to be paid as overtime. I
daresay it mayn't seem much to you,--a lot of trouble, and only a few
shillings to show for it, when all's said and done,--but that is the
way fortunes are made, by sticking at it, by plugging into it, if I may
use the term."
"The table's clear, if you want to start," said Eliza.
"Very well," I replied, and fetched my black bag from the passage to
get the accounts on which I was working. I always hang the bag on the
peg in the passage, just under my hat. Then it is there in the morning
when and where it is wanted. Method in little things has always been
rather a motto of mine.
"It has sometimes struck me, Eliza," I said, as I came back into the
dining-room, with the bag in my hand, "that you do not read so much as
I should like to see you read."
"Well, you asked me to take my work, and these socks are for you, and I
never know what you do want."
"I did not mean that I wanted you to read at this moment. But there is
one book--I cannot say exactly what the title is, and the name of the
author has slipped my memory, which I should like to see in your hands
occasionally, because it deals with the making of fortunes. It
practically shows you how to do it."
"Did the man who wrote it make one?" asked Eliza.
"That--not knowing the name of the man--I cannot say for certain."
"Well, I should want to know that first. And aren't you going to
start?"
"I can hardly start until I have unlocked my bag, and I cannot unlock
my bag until I have the keys, and I cannot have the keys until I have
fetched them from the bedroom. Try to be a little more reasonable."
I could not find the keys in the bedroom. Then Eliza went up, and she
could not find them, either. By a sort of oversight they were in my
pocket all the time. I laughingly remarked that I knew I should find
them first. Eliza seemed rather pettish, the joke being against
herself.
"The reason why I mentioned that book," I said, as I unlocked the bag,
"is because it points out that there are two ways of making a fortune.
One is, if I may say so, my own way,--by method in little things,
economy of time, doing all the work that one can get to do, and----"
"You won't get much done to-night, if you don't start soon," said
Eliza.
"I do not like to be interrupted in the middle of a sentence. The other
way by which you may make a fortune--well, it's not making a fortune.
It's that the fortune makes you, if you understand me."
"I don't," said Eliza.
"I mean that the fortune may come of itself by luck. Luck is a very
curious thing. We cannot understand it. It's of no use to talk about
it, because it is quite impossible to understand it."
"Then don't let's talk about it, especially when you've got something
else to do."
"Temper, temper, Eliza! You must guard against that. I was not going to
talk about luck. I was going to give you an instance of luck, which
happened to come within my own personal experience. It is the case of a
man of the name of Chumpleigh, in our office, and would probably
interest and amuse you. I do not know if I have ever mentioned
Chumpleigh to you."
"Yes, you've told me all about him several times."
I might have mentioned Chumpleigh to Eliza, but I am sure that I have
never told her all about him. However, I was not going to sulk, and so
I told her the story again. The story would not have been so long if
she hadn't interrupted me so frequently.
When I had finished, she said that it was time to go to bed, and I had
wasted the evening.
I owned that possibly I had been chatting rather longer than I had
intended, but I would still get those accounts done, and sit up to do
them.
"And that means extra gas," she said. "That's the way money gets
wasted."
"There are many men in my place," I said, "who would refuse to sit down
to work as late as this. I don't. Why? On principle. Because it's
through the cultivation of the sort of thing that I cultivate one
arrives at fortune. Think what fortune would mean to us. Big house,
large garden, servants, carriages. I should come in from a day with the
hounds, and perhaps say I felt rather done up, and would like a glass
of champagne. No question of expense--not a word about it--money no
object. You'd just get the bottle out of the sideboard, and I should
have my glass, and they'd finish it in the kitchen, and----"
"_Are_ you going to begin, or are you not?" asked Eliza.
"This minute," I replied, opening the black bag. I examined the
contents carefully.
"Well," I said, "this is a very strange occurrence indeed--most
unaccountable! I don't remember ever to have done anything of the kind
before, but I seem to have forgotten to bring that work from the city.
Dear me! I shall be forgetting my head next."
Eliza's reply that this would be no great loss did not seem to me to be
either funny, or polite, or even true. "You strangely forget yourself,"
I replied, and turned the gas out sharply.