“Do you say why? Well, I say, why not? I don’t believe I shall ever make such a prodigy of a lawyer, sister mine, and it’s a horribly long pull ahead before I show whether I do or not, and here is a chance to take care of myself right away, instead of dragging on you a dozen years; and I tell you, Nelly, it would take all the man out of a better fellow than I am to do that.”
“Hush, Aleck! You know how much papa wished you to have a profession, and his own above all others.”
“I know it, Nelly,” said Aleck, gently; “but perhaps,” and he glanced questioningly in her face, “perhaps he sees some things differently now. At any rate,” he added more lightly, “there are more professions in these days than there used to be, and I’m sure a druggist’s, or at least a chemist’s, is counted among the most respectable of them. And as for Uncle Ralph, every one knows that he makes a profession of his work. Why, what do you think came to him from England the other day? A certificate of fellowship in the Royal Academy of Sciences! Imagine me in that place! Wouldn’t that shine brighter than being called a brother by the members of some county bar?”
“Aleck, why will you trouble me by talking so?”
“Trouble you, Nelly! I wouldn’t for the world; but Uncle Ralph wants his answer day after to-morrow.”
“Well, it is ready for him; he need not have waited as long as that. Tell him we both love him with all our hearts, for his own sake and dear papa’s, and if he is lonely nothing would give us greater joy than to have him come right here with us, but that it was papa’s wish you should study.”
Aleck had left his seat and stood behind his sister’s chair, bending caressingly over the knot of golden curls.
“Nelly,” he said, in low earnest tones, “papa did not know how little there would be left; he did not know how it would have to be done. He was a gentleman himself, every inch, and he wanted me to be one; but which would he say was most worthy of the name, to take the little that belongs to my beautiful sister, and use it up, on the chance of returning it after years and years, or to go into an honorable place where I can be of more use in a month, saving life and health, than I could in a year of settling quarrels and splitting hairs? Nelly, I can’t do it! I can’t take what belongs to you! If I ever get a profession, I must wait till I can earn the money, and that will put the happy day so far off that you will be a tired-out old lady, waiting for it,” and he laughed again, for Aleck never looked on the gloomy side many minutes at a time.
“And if money were as thick as blackberries,” he went on, “I’d rather be a doctor, anyhow; and this comes next door to it, and I’m not sure but a little above, for the doctors can’t move hand or foot without the druggists. I tell you, Nelly, there’s more in it than you think, and I might come out so scientific, and such a wise man, that you wouldn’t venture to speak to me except in the most respectful manner. It isn’t as it was in old times, when doctors took a spoonful of almost anything out of their pockets for a patient! I wish you could just see them come to Uncle Ralph with some difficult, delicate thing that they want done, and that they can’t do themselves with all their wisdom, to save their lives and their patients’ too! And I promise you it’s a place where the greenbacks come in! And I should get my share of them, instead of starving to death, waiting in my office like a spider in his web, to catch my first unlucky fly!”