“It is rather suspicious,” he said. “Well, what is the other of his two things?”
“The other is, to begin studying medicine at once, so as to help you.”
“Heyday!” cried Dr. May, drawing up his tall vigorous figure, “does he think me so very ancient and superannuated?”
What could possess him to be so provoking and unsentimental to-night? Was it her own bad management? She longed to put an end to the conversation, and answered, “No, but he thinks it hard that none of your sons should be willing to relieve you.”
“It won’t be Norman,” said Dr. May. “He is not made of the stuff. If he survived the course of study, every patient he lost, he would bring himself in guilty of murder, and there would soon be an end of him!”
“He says that a man can force himself to anything that is his duty.”
“This is not going to be his duty, if I can make it otherwise. What is the meaning of all this? No, I need not ask, poor boy, it is what I was afraid of!”
“It is far deeper,” said Ethel; and she related great part of what she had heard in the afternoon. It was not easy to make her father listen—his line was to be positively indignant, rather than compassionate, when he heard of the doubts that had assailed poor Norman. “Foolish boy, what business had he to meddle with those accursed books, when he knew what they were made of—it was tasting poison, it was running into temptation! He had no right to expect to come out safe—” and then he grasped tightly hold of Ethel’s hands, and, as if the terror had suddenly flashed on him, asked her, with dilated eye and trembling voice, whether she were sure that he was safe, and held the faith.
Ethel repeated his asseveration, and her father covered his face with his hands in thanksgiving.
After this, he seemed somewhat inclined to hold poor Oxford in horror, only, as he observed, it would be going out of the frying-pan into the fire, to take refuge at Paris—a recurrence to the notion of Norman’s medical studies, that showed him rather enticed by the proposal.