“But you’ll have to work, Nic.”
“To be sure, father. I’m sure I shall like it.”
“A great change from school, my boy.”
“Yes, father; but it was a great change for you to come from your London practice.”
“So it was, Nic,” said the doctor: “a greater change, perhaps, for I was no longer young and sanguine. Greatest of all was the change for your mother and sisters—leaving, as they did, all the pleasant comforts of life, to be their own servants and stoop to all kinds of work. But they were very good. They saw health was the great thing. Nic, boy, for once let me refer to this seriously. I came out believing that I might prolong my poor weary life a year. At the end of that year I thought I could prolong it two more; and at the end of those three years I began to be hopeful of living with those dear to me another three.”
“And now, father, you are going to live to be a fine, healthy, hearty old man.”
“Please God, Nic,” said the doctor, reverently raising his hat,—“for the sake of your mother and the girls.”
“He might have said, ‘and for your sake too,’” thought Nic, as the doctor walked away to pat one of the horses, returning directly after to talk in a bright cheery way.
“I’m glad you like the horses and the place, Nic,” he said. “Your mother and I were a little nervous about it being dull for you.”
“Oh, I shan’t be dull, father,” cried the boy. “Not if you have a boy’s healthy appreciation of nature, Nic; and that I hope you have. No, you can’t be dull; there is too much to take your attention. It will be a rougher education, but it is a grand healthy life—one like this out in a new land, to make a good simple natural home. People fear to come to some of these places, because they say there’s no doctor. I am a doctor, Nic.”