CHAPTER XVI.
A year passed away, and things began to look a good deal clearer to Aleck; and the farther he went, the more ready he was to confess his uncle was keeping his promise to show him he could study a profession behind his counter, as well as he could in a doctor’s office or a law-school.
“It isn’t so bad, after all, Nelly,” he said now and then as he came home with a glowing account of some new experiment, “and you may be proud of me yet as a distinguished chemist, assayer, and what not. If you’re not, it will only be because you can’t appreciate me.”
The year as it closed brought another graduating-class to their leave-takings at the professor’s, and this time Hal Fenimore gathered his laurels, and said farewell with the rest, but with no tears of regret for the past or the future.
“What a ridiculous little goose Will Carter was,” he said the next day as he came into Halliday’s for a few minutes’ chat with Aleck; “what a queer notion that he didn’t like business, and would rather go off and play middy on that old prison of a ship than enter the counting-house. I’m going straight in with my uncle, and thankful enough to do it, and expect to be taken in as partner, and make my fortune before he’s anything more than second-mate, and it isn’t half the chance there was at Carter & Co.’s, either. I don’t wonder he didn’t want to go to college and stuff with Latin and Greek four years more; but to throw away such a chance as he had at home, to go and put himself under the thumb of a second-mate, and tar ropes and eat hard-tack for nobody knows how long before he gets a peg higher!”
Aleck didn’t tell Hal that he himself was stealing every hour he could get by day and by night to follow up the college course; he only laughed, and said,
“Well, it might go rather hard with your store if nobody took a fancy to go to sea; I don’t know where some of your best goods would come from.”
“That’s a fact,” said Hal; “every one to his taste, and I’m glad Carter’s got a berth to his fancy, and I hope he’ll make the most of it.”
Just as Hal left the store, old Joan opened the door of the doctor’s office and stepped softly in. There was no fire to be brushed up this time, but she made one pretext after another until she got round in front of the doctor’s chair, as she always did when she meant to open a discussion. But this time it seemed as if she could not manage to begin, and the doctor, guessing at her subject, concluded he must help her.
“Where’s Thorndyke, Joan?”