“No, Syd, you’ll be a captain, and the physic for your patients will be cat-o’-nine-tails.”
Sydney frowned, and as they neared the busy town, with its little forest of masts rising beyond the houses, Doctor Liss glanced sideways at the boy’s gloomy and thoughtful countenance.
“Why, Syd,” he said at last merrily, “you look as gloomy as if you had been pressed. Come, my lad, take your medicine, and then you can have that sweet afterwards that we call duty.”
Sydney made no reply, but his face did not brighten, for duty seemed to him then a nauseous bitter.
“Doctor Liss,” he said, just as they reached the docks, down one of whose side lanes the patient lay, “if I make up my mind to be a doctor—”
“You can’t, Syd. You are too young to have one yet. A man’s mind is as strong as if it had bone and muscle. Yours is only like jelly.”
Syd was silent again for a minute. Then he began once more—
“If I determined to be a doctor, and wouldn’t be anything else, would you teach me?”
“No, certainly not.”
“Then I’d teach myself,” cried Syd, fiercely.