“No, don’t,” cried Llewellyn—“don’t say that.” A spasm of pain flitted across the boy’s face, then vanished.
“I want to help mother, and I will,” he said stoutly. “I don’t intend her to do all the toiling and money-making any longer. I am almost a man, Leslie; I shall be seventeen my next birthday. Oh, in one sense it is young! but it is not young with me, for I think I am older than my years. I won’t see her grinding without putting my own shoulder to the wheel. It’s just intolerable!”
“I wish you would listen to me, Llewellyn,” said Leslie; “it is not too late yet. The chance has been offered to you and the chance has been offered to me. It seems to me, on thinking things over, that only one of us can take it, for mother can’t do without both of us.”
“That’s just what I said,” interrupted Llewellyn; “you are to go and I am to stay. It is all arranged. Don’t, like a dear girl, worry over the thing any longer. It’s done, and that’s an end of it.”
“But you must let me speak,” said Leslie. “I can never go to St. Wode’s unless I make a clean breast of all that is in my mind. If one of us is to grind for the present, ought not I to be the one? I am older than you, I have had a more thorough education, I can easily get
a position as junior teacher in Miss Harkaway’s school. There is a vacancy, and she has half promised it to me. That will bring me in thirty pounds a year and my food, and, after a bit, I might do even better. Thus I should be altogether off mother’s hands, and could even help her a trifle. Then, Lew, you will be really helping her at Oxford. As you are acquiring learning, and as those magnificent brains of yours are being cultivated to their full worth, you will be preparing for a learned profession, or a professorship, or something of that kind. Surely, surely, that would be a more substantial help to the sweetest mother in the world than your earning a pound a week now at Lee & Forrest’s.”
“There is something in what you say, Leslie; but there is not enough in it,” said Llewellyn quietly. “Believe me, I have thought of all this from every point of view. In the first place, professorships do not mean wealth, and, for mother’s sake, I mean to be a wealthy man some day. You must go into trade to be wealthy now. Oh, it is not that I care for money, not a bit! But I want to save the mother, to keep her from toiling when she is old, to help the younger children. I can’t stand Parker doing all the help, Leslie; the mere thought drives me half wild. Then I shall not always work at a pound a week. In a couple of years I may be earning a salary of two hundred a year, for I don’t mind telling you that young Forrest has taken no end of a fancy to me, and he and I had a long talk to-day. He took me up to see his father, and his father would do anything for a boy Jim liked. Jim goes to Oxford in the autumn. He hates the shop, and he won’t go into business, for he can’t stand it, and so his father has to start him in a profession. But he hinted very broadly—and so did the old man, too, for that matter—that if I could take his place it would put
matters a bit right and smooth down the pride of old Forrest; so I shall have my chance, Leslie—a small partnership by and by; and I mean to take it, little girl, so you can go to Wingfield with a heart and a half, and win the academic honors of the family. It is a splendid chance for you, Leslie, and I’m not the fellow to stand in your way.”
“But I just wish you would!” she cried.
Llewellyn put one of his arms round her and drew her close to him.