“Perhaps—you do sometimes put me in mind of your uncle. But why have you only spoken of it now?”
“I don’t think I really considered what I should be,” said John. “There was quite enough to think of with work, and cricket, and all the rest, till this spring, when I have been off it all, and then when I talked it over with Dr. Medlicott, he settled my mind about various things that I wanted to know.”
“Did he persuade you?”
“No more than saying that I managed well for Jock when I was left alone with him, and that he thought I had the makings of a doctor in me. He loves his profession of course, and thinks it a grand one. Yes, papa, indeed I think it is. To be always learning the ways of God’s working, for the sake of lessening all the pain and grief in the world—”
“Johnny! That’s almost what my brother said to me thirty years ago, and what did it come to? Being at the beck and call night and day of every beggar in London, and dying at last in his prime, of disease caught in their service.”
“Yes,” said John, with a low, gruff sound in his voice, “but is not that like being killed in battle?”
“The world doesn’t think it so, my boy,” said the soldier. “Well! what is it you propose to do?”
“I don’t suppose it will make much difference yet,” said John, “except that at Oxford I should go in more for physical science.”
“You don’t want to give up the university?”
“Oh, no! Dr. Medlicott said a degree there is a great help, besides that, all the general study one can get is the more advantage, lifting one above the mere practitioner.”