“I do not think you understand what you would throw away. What is the difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?”
“Higg can do that one thing just by instinct. He is uneducated.”
“And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full training and expansion. If you mean to be a great surgeon—”
“I don’t mean to be a surgeon.”
“A physician then.”
“No, sir. Please don’t let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice, at everyone’s beck and call. I’ve seen too much of that. I mean to get a professorship, and have time and apparatus for researches, so as to get to the bottom of everything,” said the boy, with the vast purposes of his age.
“Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school, trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own bent. Your contempt for the classics shows how one-sided you are growing. Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated classics. You would have many more opportunities, and much better ones, of studying physical science than I can provide for you here.”
This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he allowed that it made all the difference.
Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.
“Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth Lawn.”