Toni shook his head. "No chance of that now," he said; "for nobody could ever get a scholarship in this school, if there were fifty to be had for the trying."
"Tom, I don't like to hear you talk like that," said his mother; "as though you had made up your mind to give up at once, without trying to overcome the difficulties that are in the way of your getting a good education now. Why, what is to become of you, if—"
"I can read better than any boy in the school," said Tom, proudly.
"Perhaps you can, you were always fond of reading. But, according to your own account, you could not do the sum that was set you; and yet you ask me to let you leave school, because of the difficulties that are in the way of your learning. I should be a foolish mother if I gave way to you, my boy."
"But I don't want to be a clerk, and stick at a desk all day," muttered Tom. "Old Mother Gunn says I shall make a first-rate gardener; and she'll tell me lots of things her father told her about grafting, and budding, and other things."
"It's very kind of Betsy Gunn, and I am very much obliged to her for helping you as she does. But you must consider this, Tom, that the sort of gardening that would do when her father and grandfather were young, would not do now. If you are to be a gardener, I should like you to be a good one, and learn it, if possible, at one of the agricultural or horticultural colleges; though how it is to be managed, now you have thrown over the chance of getting a scholarship like Elsie's, I don't know."
Tom opened his eyes in blank amazement. "I never thought a scholarship would help me to be a gardener," he said. "Oh, mother, why didn't you tell me this when I had my chance of getting one," and the tears rose to Tom's eyes, though he brushed them away, for fear his mother or Elsie should see them.
"I did not know you so greatly wished to be a gardener until we came here, and I thought it was enough to tell you that father and I would be glad if you could get a scholarship, when it was first talked about. That if you knew it was your duty to try for this, you would do it without much regard to what would follow. That is where you made the mistake, Tom—you did not do your duty for duty's sake; and now you learn, when it is too late, that if you had taken this course, it would have been the means of gratifying your heart's desire."
"Oh, mother, I never knew I was losing such a chance," said Tom, bitterly.
"Poor Tom, I am sorry," said Elsie; "I wish you could have had my scholarship, and then you would not have had to go to this nasty, noisy school."