“Ah! boy, I’ll send you to school, and that’ll knock all that nonsense out of your head.”
Harry looked at his father wonderingly. He could not understand what his father meant any more than if he had talked Greek.
“Draw your stool near my knee, my lad, and I’ll suggest to you what you’ll be, and you shall choose. Well, then, first and foremost, how would you like to be a doctor? Fine thing to be a doctor, drive about in a beautiful white-lined carriage, have the entrée of all the best houses, have a splendid house yourself, and—”
“Nasty man!” said Harry.
“Who?” said Mr Milvaine.
“Why, the doctor to be sure. Dear papa, I wouldn’t take physic myself even, and I’m sure I wouldn’t ask anybody else to. No, papa, I’ll be a sailor.”
“Well, how would you like to enter the Church? how would you like to be a clergyman? No one in the world so highly respected as a clergyman. He is fit to sit down side by side with royalty itself, and his holy mission, Harold—”
“Stop, stop, papa. I say my prayers every morning and I say my prayers every night, but somehow I go and do naughty things just the same. You know I tree’d poor guvie for a whole night, and I tease poor Towsie, and I slew the Cochin China cock. No, no, dear papa; I’m not good enough to be a clergyman. I’ll be a sailor.”
“Well, how would you like to enter business, and rise, perhaps, to be Lord Mayor of London, and ride in a gilded coach, and live in a house like a palace—”
“Papa, papa, don’t; I would rather live in the beech tree in the forest than in a palace. I’ll be a sailor.”