“I mean precisely what I say,” persisted Mr. Henning, almost relentlessly; “a priest's life is one of constant self-sacrifice and denial. You can not begin to practise those virtues too soon.”
“But, Father, I am captain of the ball nine, and the football eleven, at college,” And there was a world of appeal in the boy's voice.
“I am sorry, under the circumstances, to hear it. Abstinence from baseball and football and boating and all sorts of contests is the condition under which I sanction your plans, which, pardon me if I say it, I can not but consider chimerical. The test I have selected will prove how right or wrong I am in my opinion. You will take only enough exercise to keep a sound mind in a sound body.”
Whether Roy Henning's father was acting judiciously or otherwise, we will not undertake to say. We merely give the facts. Mr. Henning was desirous to see how his son would act under circumstances which he readily admitted would be particularly trying.
It is probable that many boys will be inclined to think that Roy Henning was not in such a very sad plight after all, and perhaps would be willing to exchange places with him if their pocketbooks were exchanged too. It is true that many a boy goes to college with far less spending money than that which was to be Roy's share for his graduating year. It
must be understood, in order to make Roy's position clear, that the boy was generous to a fault, and never having stinted his expenditures at college, or been stinted in the supply, he was looked to for pecuniary assistance by all sorts of college associations whose financial condition, as most collegians are aware, is perennially in a state of collapse. He was one of the most popular boys, because his purse was always open.
His father had, indeed, arranged a severe test for him. He little realized what the trials of a rich boy's poverty were. Little did he imagine to what hours of guiltless ignominy he was unwittingly condemning his son. We must do the lawyer the justice to say that had he imagined but one-tenth of the trials which were to come upon his son by his restrictive action, he would have been the last man to have imposed the conditions.
Roy Henning accepted them unreservedly, and the conversation at the beginning of the first chapter shows us how fully and completely he intended to obey his father's injunctions.