"Oh, I shall study law. I expect to enter Princeton next fall. I wish you were going. I suppose you could be ready if you studied hard until then?"
"Yes, I suppose so, and father would like it. He has always wanted me to be a lawyer, but I don't incline that way."
"You are not obliged to be a lawyer," said Lewie, laughing.
"I know," returned Herbert, "but my ambition has been to become a rich merchant—not that I should care to be just a rich man and nothing more, but I'd like to do good in the world, and if I had money, I could be so much more useful. I'd like to help poor people, build churches and send out missionaries, and that sort of thing."
"I see; that's all very nice to want to do, and maybe you'll reach that point; but I think you are made to travel by a roundabout road."
"That's so," returned Herbert. "As I said, failure is written upon everything that I undertake. I'm sure I don't know what to do."
"Ask God!" said Mr. Earle, who in passing caught the last sentence without at all guessing the drift of the conversation, but such was his thought and practice to ask God for direction in all things, and the reply came readily in reply to Herbert's bewildered tone and words. He only halted an instant, then passed hurriedly on to catch the train that was puffing and snorting in the depot, seemingly in haste to be gone. It was seed by the wayside in a literal sense, but it was also seed sown on good ground.
"What a queer man Mr. Earle is," said Lewie.
"He is a thoroughly good man," returned Herbert. "Perhaps you call that queer?"
"Well, rather; such men are rare, I confess. But I was thinking how queer to ask God whether you should be a merchant or a lawyer."