“Well, that’s just as true as it ever was; but there’s another thing, that I did not say at that time. The only way to make sure of places, sometimes, is to step into them, and the only way to get our share, is to reach out and take it. Do you see?”
Thorndyke nodded.
“Well, now, there comes a time to most of us, when we have to do that, though the change from pleasant old ways makes a rough sort of break sometimes. For instance, it would go pretty hard with me to miss you out of the office, but it would not do to keep you here too long, and I never meant to do it. I meant to make a doctor of you after awhile, but I’m afraid that isn’t going to do, as things are. Doctors have a pretty hard time now and then, and as long as that pain holds on, I’m afraid it wouldn’t do. But what would you say to just going round the corner to Halliday’s once or twice a day, and trying whether you or your friend Aleck there can do most toward keeping up the credit of the firm? How do you think that would do?”
A soldier! Thorndyke had meant to be one, and thought he had won some battles, and vanquished some foes for ever, but here the whole thing seemed to be rising up again, stronger than ever, and the soldier thrown to the ground in a moment.
He dropped his book on the table, and hid his face in it for a moment; then he looked suddenly up.
“Oh, I cannot,” he cried; “I never, never can! Why do you ask me such a thing? To stand there all day long and have people come in every minute to say, ‘Look at Humpy!’ Oh, it would be too much! I don’t believe even the King would ever think I could do it.”
A whole year, and that wound no nearer healing than it was at first! Not even the words forgotten! Then might not the doctor as well give up all hope that they ever would be! and all hope of everything else but making life a little easier from day to day! The pain would be there, in the heart as well as in the back, for life, he feared.
It was lucky for Carter and Hal Fenimore that he had nothing to say to them at that instant, but he stopped before Thorndyke’s chair, and lifting the white face that had dropped upon the book again, held it gently in his hands.
“You cannot let people see the form the King has seen fit to give you, when you can show them at the same time that he has given you a soul and a brain worthy of any of his princes? Is it hard to choose between hiding away here like some poor frightened thing, and stepping out where you can find every hour filled with work any man might be proud of, and make yourself known and valued all over the city by-and-by? What should you say if the day were to come when I thought I could not be satisfied with any prescription that you should not put up? Wouldn’t that be almost as good as having you for a partner, as I might if you were stronger?