“I foresee exactly the reverse,” said Pike. “I've seldom met a more acute youngster, nor one readier to take up your meaning; and if the varlet does n't get spoilt by education, but simply follows out the bent of his own shrewd intelligence, he'll do well yet.”
“You rate him more highly than I do,” said Carrington, again.
“Not impossible either; we take our soundings with very dissimilar lead-lines,” said Pike, scoffingly. “My opinion is formed by hearing the boy's own observations about character and life when he was speaking of Broughton; but if you were ten times as right about him, and I twice as many times in the wrong, he 'll do for what I intend him.”
The others expressed their full concurrence in the captain's view of the matter, voted me a phoenix of all young vagabonds, and their brother-officer Carrington a downright ass,—both being my own private sentiments to the letter.
And now for an honest avowal! It was the flattery of my natural acuteness—the captain's panegyric on my aptitude and smartness—that won me over to a concurrence in the scheme; for, at heart, I neither liked the notion of “service,” nor the prospect of the abstemious living he had so pointedly alluded to. Still, to justify the favorable impression he had conceived of me, and also with some half hope that I should see “life”—the ruling passion of my mind—under a new aspect, I resolved to accept the proposition so soon as it should be made to me; nor had I long to wait that moment.
“Con, my lad,” said the captain, “you may leave that belt there; come aft here,—I want to speak to you. What are your plans when you reach Quebec? Do you mean to look after your old master, Sir Dudley, again?”
“No, sir; I have had enough of salt water for a time,—I 'll keep my feet on dry land now.”
“But what line of life do you propose to follow?”
I hesitated for the answer, and was silent.
“I mean,” resumed he, “is it your intention to become a farm-servant with some of the emigrant families, or will you seek for employment in the town?”