He does not like now to rejoin his old companions in the Inn, who have been working steadily during the years he has lost.

He therefore, perhaps, adopts a middle course, and gets himself enrolled in the society of solicitors, which does not exact a very elaborate diploma." "Well, after all, the difference between a barrister and a solicitor is not so great." "True; but the exercises to which he has been accustomed previously unfit him for the drudgeries of his new employment, and he soon abandons that, just as he abandoned the other two." "Your friend Peter is somewhat difficult to please," said Jack.
"He then goes into business, a term which may mean a great deal or nothing at all; it admits of one's going about idle with the appearance of being fully occupied.

Then a few unsuccessful speculations bring him back, at the end of his days, to the point whence he started--that is, zero." "Ah, yes, I see now," cried Jack, whilst he traced a diagram on the ground.

"Poor Peter has always stopped in the middle of each profession and gone back to the starting point of another, thus passing his life in making zig-zags, and only moving from one zero to another." "Exactly," added Wolston: "whilst those who persevered in following up the profession they chose at first finally succeeded in attaining a position, and that simply by adhering to a straight line." Here Fritz and his mother arrived, arm in arm.
"Ha! there you are," cried Ernest.

"We were on our way to meet you." "You surely do not call sitting down there being on your way to meet us, do you ?" "Well, yes, mother," suggested Jack, "on the principle that two bodies coming into contact meet each other." Like those flowers that droop during a storm, but recover their brilliancy with the first rays of the sun, so a few days more sufficed to restore Mary Wolston to better health than she had ever enjoyed in her life before.