“Yes, Van; we may as well have our talk out.”
“Ah!” he took a chair close by her side, “tell me my father’s last words.”
“He said he hoped you would never be a tailor.”
Evan’s forehead wrinkled up. “There’s not much fear of that, then!”
His mother turned her face on him, and examined him with a rigorous placidity; all her features seeming to bear down on him. Evan did not like the look.
“You object to trade, Van?”
“Yes, decidedly, mother—hate it; but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. Didn’t my father speak of me much?”
“He desired that you should wear his militia sword, if you got a commission.”
“I have rather given up hope of the Army,” said Evan.
Mrs. Mel requested him to tell her what a colonel’s full pay amounted to; and again, the number of years it required, on a rough calculation, to attain that grade. In reply to his statement she observed: “A tailor might realize twice the sum in a quarter of the time.”