“Have you never regretted your rash act? Have you never wanted to see us?”
“Yes, sir, to both your questions. I wished myself at home a good many times during the first three months I was away, not because I was sorry I had left it, but because I was disheartened by the misfortunes I met with and the abuse I received from some of those with whom I came in contact. The world isn’t what I expected to find it by any means. I have been cured of a good many foolish notions since I left home.”
“You must have had some plan in your head when you ran away,” said Harris. “What did you expect to do?”
“I intended to become a hunter,” said Guy, with some hesitation.
“There!” exclaimed his father, suddenly brightening. “I have at last reached the root of the matter. Don’t you see now that my judgment was better than yours? If you had respected my wishes and let those miserable works of fiction alone, you would have saved yourself a great deal of trouble. Be honest now. Confess that the only reason why you left home was because you got some wild idea into your head from those books.”
“I have already told you why I left home, and why I don’t want to go back,” said Guy. “If works of fiction are such awful things, how does it come that Henry Stewart is so good a boy? He has a whole library of such books, and he doesn’t have to hide away in the carriage-house or attic to read them either, as I did. I don’t deny that the stories I read had something to do with my choice of an occupation, but I do deny that they had anything to do with my leaving home. The home itself was the cause of that. It was such a gloomy, dismal place, that I couldn’t stay there. But I’ve had enough of life on the frontier and on the ocean wave. It is all well enough to sit down by a comfortable fire in an easy chair, and read about the imaginary adventures that fall to the lot of hunters and sailors who never existed, but when one comes to follow the business, he finds that it is a different matter altogether.”
“Well, what are you going to do here in St. Louis?” asked Mr. Harris.
“I don’t know. I must find work of some kind, and that very soon, for I have but a few dollars left. I know nothing of business, consequently if I went into a store I should have to accept the lowest position, which would not bring me enough to board and clothe myself. The only way I can see is to enlist. I shall save every cent of my money—I think I know the value of it—and when my term of service expires, I shall have enough to enable me to take a course at the Commercial College. Perhaps after that I can find some paying situation.”
“You must not go into the service, Guy,” said Mr. Harris. “I should never expect to see you again. I can give you something to do.”
Guy opened his lips to decline this proposition without waiting to hear more about it. The thought of working under his father’s supervision was most distasteful to him—indeed, it could not be entertained for a moment. He could not bear to meet, every hour in the day, that stern, gloomy man, who never smiled. But Mr. Harris went on without giving him time to speak.