So before Andrew Lockerby went back to Glasgow David was one of the firm of Gordon & Co., sat in the directors' room, and began to feel some of the pleasant power of having money to lend. After this he was rarely seen among men of his own age--women he never mingled with. He removed to his uncle's stately house in Baker street, and assimilated his life very much to that of the older money maker. Occasionally he took a run northward to Glasgow, or a month's vacation on the Continent, but nearly all such journeys were associated with some profitable loan or investment. People began to speak of him as a most admirable young man, and indeed in some respects he merited the praise. No son ever more affectionately honored his father and mother, and Janet had been made an independent woman by his grateful consideration.
He was so admirable that he ceased to interest people, and every time he visited Glasgow fewer and fewer of his old acquaintances came to see him. A little more than ten years after his admission to the firm of Gordon & Co. he came home at the new year, and presented his father with the title-deeds of Ellenmount and Netherby. The next day old Andrew was welcomed on the City Exchange as "Lockerby of Ellenmount, gentleman." "I hae lived lang enough to hae seen this day," he said, with happy tears; and David felt a joy in his father's joy that he did not know again for many years. For while a man works for another there is an ennobling element in his labor, but when he works simply for himself he has become the greatest of all slaves. This slavery David now willingly assumed; the accumulation of money became his business, his pleasure, the sum of his daily life.
Ten years later both his uncle and father were dead, and both had left David every shilling they possessed. Then he went on working more eagerly than ever, turning his tens of thousands into hundreds of thousands and adding acre to acre, and farm to farm, until Lockerby was the richest estate in Annandale. When he was forty-five years of age fortune seemed to have given him every good gift except wife and children, and his mother, who had nothing else to fret about, worried Janet continually on this subject.