One event especially completed my self-satisfaction.

About three weeks after my interview with Mr Barnacle I was summoned into the partners' room, and there informed that, having now been eight months in their service, and proving myself useful in my situation, my salary would henceforth be twelve shillings a week! I could hardly believe my ears! Why, it was just half as much again as what I had been receiving.

On eight shillings a week I had lived economically, but not so badly.

And now, what might I not do with twelve shillings a week?
Doubleday insisted on my coming up to his lodgings that evening to celebrate the joyful event with a quiet supper.

This invitation I accepted, the first for nearly a month, and in view of the occasion spent my first extra four shillings in anticipation on a coloured Oxford-shirt, which I grandly requested, with the air of a moneyed man, to be put down to my account.