'I'd like that fust-rate,' Hiram answered; 'but I think I'd like best of all to go to sea, or to be a painter.'
'To be a painter,' Audouin murmured softly; 'to be a painter. Our great continent hasn't produced any large crop of prominent citizens who wanted to be painters. This one might, after all, be worth trying. Well, Hiram, do you think if I were to ask your father, there's any chance that he might possibly be willing to let you go to college?'
'Nary chance at all,' Hiram answered vigorously. 'Why, father couldn't spare me from the peppermint an' the pertaters; an' as to goin' to college, why, it ain't in the runnin' any way.'
'Professor,' Audouin said, 'this boy interests me. He's vital: he's aboriginal: he's a young Antæus fresh from the bare earth of the ploughed fields and furrows. Let's till him; without cutting down all the trees, let's lay him out in park and woodland. I'll have a try, anyhow, with this terrible father of yours, Hiram. Are you going home now?'
'I reckon I must,' the boy answered with a nod. 'He'll be mad enough with me as it is for stopping away so long from him.'
'You'll get a thrashing, I'm afraid, when you go home?'
'I guess that's jest the name of it.'
'Professor,' Audouin said, rising resolutely, 'this means business. We must see this thing right through immediately to the very conclusion. The boy must not have his thrashing. I'll go and see the father—beard the Geauga County agriculturist in his very lair: dispute his whelp with him: play lambent lightning round him: save the young Antæus from sinking in the natural course of things into one more pickier of pork and contented devourer of buttered buckwheat pancakes. There's a spark in him somewhere: I'm going to try whether I can manage to blow it up into a full-fed flame.'