“Yes, my dear, what would you like your future to be?”
“Well, then, Miss Lucy, I would like first of all to live right here with you and to make you as happy, to take as good care of you, as I can. But I wouldn’t like to do it all alone! I’d like to have some other fellows here, too. As many as you could afford to take. I’d like each one to learn just what he likes. There’s the Bugler. He’s just chock full of tunes. If he had a chance he might make beautiful music some day, like them big duffers what wrote the operas, you know. I’d give him music lessons if I could. I’d have Battles taught to be a regular soldier or sailor. He’s forever in a row, and he’d ought to do the right kind of fighting, hadn’t he?”
“Very sensibly put, Tows; go on,” urged the reporter.
“Shiner’s a whittler. He’s always cutting things in the door frames and buildings, and getting scolded by the folks that own them. He ought to be a carpenter and whittle something worth while. There—there are others—but I guess I’m planning too much.”
“Not a bit, my dear. Yet you say nothing of yourself. What would you like to become, Lionel?”
“I’d like to learn everything; and when I grow up I’ll write for a paper!”
It was such a characteristic wish that all the company laughed. Then remarked father Johns:
“I reckon, Miss Armacost, that the lad’s idea of a ‘home,’ an ‘asylum,’ is a place where poor children can be taught to become useful bread-winners. Apparently, he doesn’t think a life of rich idleness can be the happiest.”
“I know!” cried Molly eagerly. “The very thing that first brought him here. Dear little Towsley wants to divide his skates!”