“Nor never will be,” I cried merrily.
“Ah, you’re getting tired of natural history,” said Mercer, seating himself on the edge of the bin, and looking lovingly down at its contents, for this conversation took place up in the loft.
“Wrong!” I cried. “I get fonder of it every day; but I’m not going to skin and stuff things to please anybody, not even you.”
“I’m sorry for you,” said Mercer. “You’re going to be a soldier. My father says I’m to be a doctor. You’re going to destroy, and I’m going to preserve.”
I burst out laughing.
“I say, Tom,” I cried, as he looked up at me innocently, in surprise at my mirth, and I went and sat at the other end of the bin; “had one better kill poor people out of their misery than preserve them to look like that?” and I pointed down at the half-stuffed rabbit.
“Go on,” he said quietly. “Scientific people always get laughed at. I don’t mind.”
“More do I.”
“I’ve had lots of fun out of all these things, and it’s better than racing all over a field, kicking a bag of wind about, and knocking one another down in a charge, and then playing more sacks on the mill, till a fellow’s most squeezed flat. I hate football, and so do you.”
“No, you don’t,” I said; “you love a game sometimes as much as I do. What I don’t like in it is, that when I’m hurt, I always want to hit somebody.”