"Oh, but Johnny! Your father would never consent to that, I'm sure."
"I don't see why not," returned the boy in an aggrieved voice. "I hate figures and father knows it. I tell you I mean to go to sea." And as he said it his lip shot out, and suddenly, for all his limpid blue eyes and flaxen hair, it was his father's face that confronted Mary.
"He wouldn't think it respectable enough, dear. He wants you to rise higher in the world, and to make money. You must remember who he is."
"Bosh!" said Johnny. "Look at Uncle Ned ... and Uncle Jerry ... and the governor himself. He didn't have to sit in a beastly old hole of an office when he was my age."
"That was quite different," said Mary weakly. "And as for your Uncle Jerry, Johnny—why, afterwards he was as glad as could be to get into an office at all."
"Well, I'd sooner be hanged!" retorted young John. But the next minute flinging away dull care, he inquired briskly: "Can you play tipcat, Aunt Mary?" And vanquished by her air of kindly interest, he gave her his supreme confidence. "I say, don't peach, will you, but I've got a white rat. I keep it in a locker under my bed."
A NICE FRANK HANDSOME BOY, wrote Mary. DON'T BE TOO HARD ON HIM, JOHN. HIS GREAT WISH IS TO TRAVEL AND SEE THE WORLD—OR AS HE PUTS IT, TO GO TO SEA. MIGHTN'T IT BE A GOOD THING TO HUMOUR HIM IN THIS? A TASTE OF THE HARDSHIPS OF LIFE WOULD SOON CURE HIM OF ANY SUCH FANCIES.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said John the father, and threw the letter from him. "I didn't send Mary there to let the young devil get round her like that." And thereupon he wrote to the Headmaster that the screw was to be applied to Johnny as never before. This was his last chance. If it failed, and his next report showed no improvement, he would be taken away without further ado and planked down under his father's nose. No son of his should go to sea, he was damned if they should! For, like many another who has yielded to the wandering passion in his youth, John had small mercy on it when it reared its head in his descendants.