But the thoughts would come flitting by, full of sunshiny memories of the father who died a hero’s death, fighting as a doctor the fell disease which devastated the country town; and of the mother who soon after followed her husband, after requesting her brother to do what he could to help and protect her son.
Then the thought of his mother’s last prayer came to him as it often did—that he should try his best to prove himself worthy of his uncle’s kindness by studying hard.
“And I do—I do—I do,” he burst out aloud, passionately, “only it is so hard; and, as uncle says, I am such a fool.”
“You call me, Blount?” said a voice, and a young old-looking man came in from the next office.
“I!—call? No, Pringle,” said Tom, colouring up.
“You said something out loud, sir, and I thought you called.”
“I—I—”
“Oh, I see, sir; you was speaking a bit out of your book. Not a bad way to get it into your head. You see you think it and hear it too.”
“It’s rather hard to me, I’m afraid,” said Tom, with the puzzled look intensifying in his frank, pleasant face.
“Hard, sir!” said the man, smiling, and wiping the pen he held on the tail of his coat, though it did not require it, and then he kept on holding it up to his eye as if there were a hair or bit of grit between the nibs. “Yes, I should just think it is hard. Nutshells is nothing to it. Just like bits of granite stones as they mend the roads with. They won’t fit nowhere till you wear ’em and roll ’em down. The law is a hard road and no mistake.”