“So you have, dear boy, so you have,” agreed Margaret. “And now, if you’d let me advise you, I’d tell you to find out what you like best and what you can do best, and settle down to that. You’ve had no definite purpose at all.”
“I have. It was always a quick fortune,” Elliott remonstrated. “I’ve got it yet. There are plenty of chances in the West for a man to make a million with less capital than I’ve got now. This isn’t a country of small change.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve heard men talk like that,” said Margaret, more thoughtfully. “But it seems to me that you’ve been doing nothing but gamble all your life, hoping for a big haul. Of course, I’ve no right to advise you. Nebraska is all I know of the world, but I don’t like to think of you going back to the ‘game,’ as you call it. Do you know that it hurts me to think of you making money and losing it again, year after year, and neglecting all your real chances? Too many men have done that. A few of them won, but nobody knows where most of them died. There are such chances to do good in the world, to be happy ourselves and make others happy, and when I think of a man like my father—”
“You wouldn’t want me to go to Fiji as a missionary?” Elliott interrupted. He was shy on the subject of her father, whom Margaret had seen scarcely a dozen times since she could remember, but who was her constant ideal of heroism, energy, and virtue.
“Of course not. But don’t you like newspaper work?”
“I like it very much.”
“And isn’t it a good profession?”
“Very fair, if one works like a slave. That is, I might reach a salary of five thousand dollars a year. The best way is to buy out a small country daily and build it up as the town grows. There’s money in that sometimes.”
“Why not do it, then? It’s not for the sake of the money. I hate money; I’ve never had any. But I don’t believe any one can be really happy after he’s twenty-five without a definite purpose and a kind of settled life. Some day you’ll want to marry—”
“Don’t say that. I’ve been a free lance too long!” cried Elliott.