"Reckon you must have hated storekeepin' then, for you've made a powerful go of it."
"Thank you; I'm not ashamed to confess to you that 'tis the last business in the world that I'd have selected."
"Well, as to that, there's no difference of opinion between us, an' yet, here I've been storekeepin'—an' not for myself either—'most twenty year."
"And doing it remarkably well, too. As to not doing it for yourself, you may change your position and have an interest in the business whenever you wish it. I'm astonished that my uncle didn't say the same to you."
"But he did—after his fashion. He meant fair, but I said 'No,' for I hadn't given up hopes of what I'd wanted to do, so I didn't want to give the store all my waking hours, as an owner ought to do most of the time."
"Indeed he ought. If it isn't an impertinent question, what had you selected as your life's work?"
"The last thing you'd suspect me of, I s'pose. Long ago—before the war—I set my heart on bein' a great preacher, an' on beginnin' by gettin' a first-class education. I don't need to tell you that I missed both of 'em about as far as a man could. I wasn't overconceited about 'em at the start, for about that time there was a powerful movement in our denomination for an educated ministry. We had a few giants in the pulpit, but for ev'ry one of 'em there was dozens of dwarfs that made laughin'-stocks of 'emselves an' the church. Well, I was picked out as a young man with enough head-piece to take in an education an' with the proper spirit an' feelin' to use it well after I'd got it. Just then the war broke out, an' I went to it; when I got back I had a crippled leg, an' a dull head, an' a heavy heart—afterwards I found 'twas the liver instead of the heart, but that didn't make me any the less stupid. The upshot was that I was kind o' dropped as a candidate for the ministry, an' that made me sicker yet, an' I vowed that I'd get there in the course o' time, if I could get back my health an' senses. Once in a while, for many years, I had hopes; then again I'd get a knock-down—an extry hard lot o' chills an' fevers, or some other turn of malary that made my mind as blank an' flat as a new slate. I tried to educate myself, bein' rather old to go to school or college, an' I plodded through lots o' books, but I had to earn my livin' besides, an'—well, I reckon you can see about how much time a man workin' in a store has for thinkin' about what he's read."
"Oh, can't I!"
"An' you know, now, what losin' health an' not findin' it again has been to me."