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"Now and then, master." "And you restore them?" "It depends on the reward offered." "You're the man for me," cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes.
"I can't afford to," said Ben. "I'm a poor boy myself." "I wouldn't feel poor if I had fifty dollars," returned Tom. "I hope you'll have it sometime, and a good deal more." "So do I. When I'm a rich man, I'll wash my face oftener." "And put blacking on your boots instead of your face," added Ben. "It might look better," Tom admitted.
And in order that I may be able to do this, it is necessary that the porter, the peasant, the cook, male or female, the footman, the coachman, and the laundress, should toil from morning till night; I will not refer to the labors of the people which are necessary in order that coachman, cooks, male and female, footman, and the rest should have those implements and articles with which, and over which, they toil for my sake; axes, tubs, brushes, household utensils, furniture, wax, blacking, kerosene, hay, wood, and beef.
"I hope to get a mercantile position," answered Hector. "Take my advice," said Guy, with a derisive smile, "and buy yourself a blacking box and brush. I am told bootblacks make a good deal of money." "Hush, Guy!" said his father. "Do not insult Hector." But Hector concerned himself but little with any slight received from Guy Roscoe.
He insisted on having his boots polished and brushed with blacking, but the head clerk would only allow grease; and this was a cause of dissension between them. The one talked of stinginess, the other talked of foolish vanity.
Once fairly established in their new home, Paul went out into the streets to earn his living. The two most obvious, and, on the whole, most profitable trades, were blacking boots and selling newspapers. To the first Paul, who was a neat boy, objected on the score that it would keep his hands and clothing dirty, and, street boy though he had become, he had a pride in his personal appearance.
Carefully and gingerly we pushed along, my triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the shivering embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed to have been hewn through acres of Day and Martin's blacking, so jetty and oily seemed this Irish bog.
Dickens himself could not remember. He seldom spoke of this time, but he never forgot the misery of it. Long afterwards in one of his books called David Copperfield, when he tells of the unhappy childhood of his hero, it is of his own he speaks. But presently John Dickens got out of prison, Charles left the blacking factory, and once more went to school.
A gentleman had actually offered to help him on in the world. Nobody had ever taken any interest in him before. Life to him had been a struggle and a conflict, with very little hope of better things. He had supposed he should leave off blacking boots some time, but no prospect seemed open before him. "Why shouldn't I get up in the world?" he thought, with new ambition.
"It wasn't worth blacking your face all over just for that," he said. But Mrs. Red House laughed very much and said it was a lovely paper, and told her all she wanted to know about 1066. Then we went into the garden again and ran races, and Mrs. Red House held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on. She said she was the Patent Automatic Cheering Winning-post. We do like her.
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