“In dealing with me,” he said, “you are dealing, as you know, Mr. Brookes, with a man of means, a man who can afford to do the thing properly; you will not misunderstand me--you remember you told me that you had great difficulty in keeping the little folk who live here out of your house.”
“The neighbourhood has never been the same since they put up that row of villas. A lot of indigent fortune-hunters, they know my girls will have large fortunes at my death, so they come sneaking round the place like so many wolves.”
“I can readily sympathise with you; one doesn't make money to keep idle young fellows in the luxuries of life.”
“But you aren't sufficiently firm, Mr. Brookes; had you been brought up in the hard school that I was you would be more firm; firmness is everything. You married early, I couldn't afford to do that. At sixteen I had to shift for myself. I was three years a clerk at two pounds a week, and not many chances to rise come in the way of a clerk at two pounds a week; he must be pretty sharp, and if he doesn't seize the little chance when it comes, he will remain a little clerk all his life. It is the first steps that are difficult, the rest are nothing. You don't know what the first steps are; I do. Once you've made a thousand pounds you can swim along a bit, but the first hundred, I shall never forget it! Afterwards it is just the same; the proportions are changed, that is all. The first twenty thousand is very uphill work, the second is on the flat, the third is going downhill--it brings itself along.”
“A very good simile indeed. There's no doubt that it is money that makes money. When you have none you cannot make it. It is like corn; give a man a handful, and he must be a fool if he can't fill his barn. The beginnings are hard; none knows that better than I. But for the last ten years I've been doing fairly well.”
“I had never intended to get married, but when money really begins to accumulate it pushes you along. It is curious how money takes you along. It is like a tide. You first begin thinking of a little place in the country where you can stay from Saturday till Monday. The little place grows; it is extraordinary how it grows. You find you want flowers, and you put up a glass house; then you begin to get interested in orchids or roses, and you put up two, maybe half a dozen glass houses. Suddenly you find the rabbits are breeding in the hedgerows, and you go out yonder ferretting, but the coachman does not know how to manage the ferrets, and you start a keeper. The keeper says one morning, 'It wouldn't require much to get up a stock of pheasants in that little wood.' You say, 'Very well;' and there you are before you know it, with glass houses, rabbit-shooting, and a pheasant preserve. You have friends to stay with you for the shooting, you get talked about in the clubs, people ask why you aren't married--the place where the wife ought to be stares you in the face: a man of money, of real money, must get married. The friends who come and stay with you suggest a little dance, you think it would be very pleasant; but you know no one in the neighbourhood, the county people won't visit you, so the thing comes about, and you are head over heels in settlements before you know where you are.”