"Then that is your final decision, father?"
"Final as I can make. If you go to college you pay your own way. Good-night. I guess that settles it."
Until this offer of the place in the bank came, just after Will's graduation from the High School, his father had only said, "What's the sense of going to college? You can't make any more money by it." And Will had quietly gone on with his Greek lessons, not doubting that his father would give his consent in the end. But now it was: "This is too good a chance to miss, Will—why, you'll soon make a rich man of yourself. Of course, you must take it. What's the use of having your father a director of the Farmers' National Bank, any way? You'll soon get over your fool notions. Charlie hasn't any fool notions about 'higher education.' He's my right-hand man on the farm." And the farm was one of the most prosperous in the county.
Will knew his father and said nothing more, and on July 1st took the place in the bank and began to work at $5 a week. But he did not get over his fool notions.
You see, ever since Young could remember, he had dreamed and planned about going to college, and what is more he had put in a great many hours of good, solid study with the minister during the past years preparing himself for it, and in consequence it was often 'way after the dark by the time he had driven out home and had finished his "chores." And he did not propose to let all that work count for nothing. He had made up his mind to get a university education.
It was out of the question now to study all summer and enter the next fall, but the minister told him he was still young; he could enter the following year.
"Your boy Will's catching on quicker than Henry Johnson or any of the young men that ever worked under me yet." That's what the cashier said to Mr. Young.
"That means he's getting over his fool notions," thought Mr. Young. Really it meant that he still had them. Will never mentioned the word college to his father again; and to those of his old friends who said, "Oh, so you aren't going East after all: why's that?" he merely replied in effect that that was his business, and bent over the ledger again.
He knew that most of the town was talking and laughing about him because from the time he first announced (with a somewhat superior air, perhaps) what he intended to do after leaving the High School, more than one of them thought, and said, that it was a queer idea for Will Young to go to college when he did not want to be a preacher or a professional man; not so very many boys went to college from that part of the country.