s to show for it, when all's said and done,--but that is the
way fortunes are made, by sticking at it, by plugging into it, if I may
use the term."

"The table's clear, if you want to start," said Eliza.

"Very well," I replied, and fetched my black bag from the passage to
get the accounts on which I was working. I always hang the bag on the
peg in the passage, just under my hat. Then it is there in the morning
when and where it is wanted. Method in little things has always been
rather a motto of mine.

"It has sometimes struck me, Eliza," I said, as I came back into the
dining-room, with the bag in my hand, "that you do not read so much as
I should like to see you read."

"Well, you asked me to take my work, and these socks are for you, and I
never know what you do want."

"I did not mean that I wanted you to read at this moment. But there is
one book--I cannot say exactly what the title is, and the name of the
author has slipped my memory, which I should like to see in your hands
occasionally, because it deals with the making of fortunes. It
practically shows you how to do it."

"Did the man who wrote it make one?" asked Eliza.

"That--not knowing the name of the man--I cannot say for certain."

"Well, I should want to know that first. And aren't you going to
start?"

"I can hardly start until I have unlocked my bag, and I cannot unlock
my bag until I have the keys, and I cannot have the keys until I have
fetched them from the bedroom. Try to be a little more reasonable."

I could not find the keys in the bedroom. Then Eliza went up, and she
could not find them, either. By a sort of oversight they were in my
pocket all the time. I laughingly remarked that I knew I should find
them first. Eliza seemed rather pettish, the joke being against
herself.

"The reason why I mentioned that book," I said, as I unlocked the bag,
"is because it points out that there are two ways of making a fortune.
One is, if I may say so, my own way,--by method in little things,
economy of time, doing all the work that one can get to do, and----"

"You won't get much done to-night, if you don't start soon," said
Eliza.

"I do not like to be interrupted in the middle of a sentence. The other
way by which you may make a fortune--well, it's not making a fortune.
It's that the fortune makes you, if you understand me."

"I don't," said Eliza.

"I mean that the fortune may come of itself by luck. Luck is a very
curious thing. We c