Val only laughed, and crushed the crisp bank-note into the pocket of his trousers. “I mean to spend it for you on Monday, when I am going to town on leave,” he said. He was going to see Miss Percival, his grandmother’s friend. And, in fact, he did buy Dick a number of things, which seemed to his youthful fancy appropriate in the circumstances. He bought him some books, a few of those standard works which Val knew ought to be in everybody’s library, though he did not much trouble them himself; and a capital box of tools, and drawing materials, for Dick had displayed some faculty that way. Both the boys were as happy as possible--the one in bestowing, the other in receiving, this gift. Lady Eskside’s present gave them the deepest pleasure, though she was so far from knowing who was the recipient of her bounty. “Brown,” said Val, solemnly, after they had enjoyed the delight of going over every separate article, and examining and admiring it--“Brown, you mind what I am going to say. You must rise in the world; you have made a great deal of progress already, and you must make still more. Heaps of fellows not half so good as you have got to be rich, and raised themselves by their exertions. You must improve your mind; and you must take the good of every advantage that offers, and rise in the world.”
“I’ll try, sir,” said Dick, with the cheeriest laugh. He was ready to have promised to scale the skies, if Val had recommended it. He arranged his books carefully in a little bookcase he had made, which was far handsomer than the old one which had received the yellow volumes--overflowings of Val’s puerile library. But I am not sure that Macaulay and Gibbon instructed him much more than the ‘Headless Horseman’ had done. His was not a mind which was much affected by literature; he cared more for doing than for reading, and liked his box of tools better than his library. Musing over his work, he revolved many things in his head, and got to have very just views about matters concerning which his education had been a blank; but he did not get his ideas out of books. That was not a method congenial to him, though he would have acknowledged with respect that it was most probably the right way. But anyhow, Val had done his duty by his _protégé_. He had put into his hands the means of rising in the world, and he had suggested this ambition. Whatever might happen hereafter, he had done his best.