Why, you've got a good cloth
coat, a clean shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin. You've got the
sleek look of a man who has slept between sheets and had his
breakfast. You can't humbug me about poverty, for I know what it
is. Poverty means looking like a scarecrow, feeling like a
scarecrow, and getting treated like a scarecrow. That was _my_
luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying the law.
Poverty, indeed! Do you shake in your shoes, Mr. Artist, when you
think what you were at twenty? I do, I can promise you."
He began to shift about so irritably in his chair, that, in the
interests of my work, I was obliged to make an effort to calm
him.
"It must be a pleasant occupation for you in your present
prosperity," said I, "to look back sometimes at the gradual
processes by which you passed from poverty to competence, and
from that to the wealth you now enjoy."
"Gradual, did you say?" cried Mr. Boxsious; "it wasn't gradual at
all. I was sharp--damned sharp, and I jumped at my first start in
business slap into five hundred pounds in one day."
"That was an extraordinary step in advance," I rejoined. "I
suppose you contrived to make some profitable investment--"
"Not a bit of it! I hadn't a spare sixpence to invest with. I won
the money by my brains, my hands, and my pluck; and, what's more,
I'm proud of having done it. That was rather a curious case, Mr.
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