Pleasure the money would most
probably have brought for us in abundance; but I doubt if it could buy us
more perfect happiness than we may know in the simplest home that my toil
can support. Ah, Captain, I question if you ever knew the sweetest
sensation life can give--the delight of working for those we love."
Captain Paget stared at his sometime protege in a kind of rapture of
wonder, not entirely unmingled with admiration.
"Egad!" he exclaimed, "I have read of this kind of thing in novels; but
in the whole course of my experience I never met with anything equal to
it. My son-in-law, Lenoble yonder, is a generous foo--fellow enough; but
then, since infancy, he has never known the want of money. And generosity
from that kind of man is no more of a virtue than the foolhardiness of a
child who pokes his finger into the candle, not knowing the properties of
the thing he has to deal with. But anything like generosity from you,
from a man reared as you were reared, is, I freely confess, a little
beyond my comprehension."
"Yes; it is a transformation, is it not? But I don't think I was ever
inordinately fond of money. Your genuine Bohemian rarely is. He is too
well schooled in the art of living without cash, and he asks so little
here below. His pipe, his friend, his dog, his books, his garret, his
billiards, his beer. It is all a question of a few pounds a week.
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