Jack was silent.
“But—” he said presently, and stopped.
“You may be quite sure of one thing,” I said seriously. “If you are ever to have any hope of winning Maimie to be your wife, it will not be by proving yourself so poor and weak a creature, that you can’t even study for a couple of hours a day, unless you have a girl to sit by your side and keep you up to the mark.”
Jack turned crimson, and sprang to his feet. Then he sat down on a chair near. “Mother! that’s rather hard.”
“Is it?” I asked. “I don’t want to be hard on any one, least of all on my Jack. But I do want you not to make this one aim the whole of life and work and duty for yourself.”
“It doesn’t seem as if anything else were worth doing, if I can’t have Maimie,” Jack said, in a dejected tone.
“Yes, so you feel at this moment. It is natural, but it is not right. God may or may not grant you that wish of your heart. Either way, life has higher aims and higher duties.”
“I don’t see them.”
And I said, “'Whether we live, we live unto the Lord.’ Would you live only to Maimie, Jack? 'Whether we die, we die unto the Lord,’—if we live unto Him. Will you live and die only with a poor earthly love as your highest good?”
Then another pause.