But, naturally, the men who owned him knew that a boy can
live very comfortably on a certain income--pay in India is a matter of age, not
merit, you see, and if their particular boy wished to work like two boys,
Business forbid that they should stop him! But Business forbid that they should
give him an increase of pay at his present ridiculously immature age! So Dicky
won certain rises of salary--ample for a boy--not enough for a wife and child--
certainly too little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that he and Mrs. Hatt
had discussed so lightly once upon a time. And with this he was forced to be
content.
Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away in Home drafts and the crushing
Exchange, and the tone of the Home letters changed and grew querulous. "Why
wouldn't Dicky have his wife and the baby out? Surely he had a salary--a fine
salary--and it was too bad of him to enjoy himself in India. But would he--
could he--make the next draft a little more elastic?" Here followed a list of
baby's kit, as long as a Parsee's bill. Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his
wife and the little son he had never seen--which, again, is a feeling no boy is
entitled to--enlarged the draft and wrote queer half-boy, half- man letters,
saying that life was not so enjoyable after all and would the little wife wait
yet a little longer? But the little wife, however much she approved of money,
objected to waiting, and there was a strange, hard sort of ring in her letters
that Dicky didn't understand.
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