“Them prize books—have ye done all that?”
“Yes, father.”
“And put all the prices down, as I told ye?”
“Yes, father.”
Then a pause. Edwin’s heart was beating hard.
“I want to do some of these architecture things,” he repeated. No remark from his father. Then he said, fastening his gaze intensely on the table: “You know, father, what I should really like to be—I should like to be an architect.”
It was out. He had said it.
“Should ye?” said his father, who attached no importance of any kind to this avowal of a preference. “Well, what you want is a bit o’ business training for a start, I’m thinking.”
“Oh, of course!” Edwin concurred, with pathetic eagerness, and added a piece of information for his father: “I’m only sixteen, aren’t I?”
“Sixteen ought to ha’ been in bed this two hours and more. Off with ye!”