“One can take an interest in anything one sets one’s mind to,” he continued. “I shall begin double entry and bookkeeping and all that sort of thing to-morrow, and the classics may go to Hong Kong for the present. Poor old Plato! I loved him, and I had dreams about him; but he and I must be strangers for the present. You think me silly now, dear, but you won’t when I have succeeded. By the time I have a great big shop of my own you will think me the wise one of the family. Leslie, my dear, what is wrong?”
For Leslie had squeezed his arm so tightly that the lad winced.
“I can’t bear to think of you with a shop,” she cried, “with that brain and those eyes. And oh, Lew! don’t you remember how you translated Thucydides for us? And—oh, Lew, it can’t be borne.”
“It must be borne,” he replied stoutly. “I can have lessons in the classics if I have time enough presently. Oh, a university man is not the only man in the world, Leslie. But now we will talk no more of this. Once for all, my mind is made up.”
“What would our father have said,” she cried; “our father, who was a great scholar?”
“If he were to come back, and if he could speak to me,
I am quite certain he would say that I was more worthy to be his son if I helped the mother quickly than if I did anything else,” replied the boy.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Leslie, in a thoughtful voice.
Llewellyn rubbed his hand over his eyes.
“I don’t pretend, all the same, that it’s not been no end of a tussle,” he said; “but now my mind is made up.”