"What is it?" Hildegarde asked, seeing that a confidence was coming.
"There is only one thing in the world that I want," cried the boy, "and that is just what I cannot have. I want to go to Leipsic, and Uncle Tom won't hear of it; calls it nonsense, and is going to send me to Harvard. We are poor, you know; Daddy doesn't know anything about money, and—and who cares about it, anyhow, except for—for things one wants? Uncle Tom says I can't make a bow, and—oh, all kinds of rubbish! What's the use of making a bow? I'm not going to be a dancing-master, Hildegarde!"
"Indeed, you would not be a good one!" his cousin said; "but, considering that one must make bows, Jack, isn't it just as well to do it well as to do it badly?"
"Who cares?" cried the boy, shaking his head wildly. "If a man is going to be anything, who cares how he bows? And—oh, of course that is one item. I am to go to Harvard, and learn to bow and to dance, and to be a classical scholar, and to play base-ball. I hate base-ball, Hilda! it's perfect idiocy, and it makes my head ache, and any one can see that I'm not cut out for athletics. Are you laughing at me?"
"Indeed I am not!" said Hildegarde, heartily. "But, tell me! you want to go to Leipsic, to study music?"
"Of course!" was the reply. "And Daddy wants me to go, and Herr Geigen is going over in the autumn, and he would place me, and all; but Uncle Tom hates music, you know, and if I speak of it he goes off in a rage, and talks about rascally Dutch fiddlers, and says I walk like a giraffe with the palsy. At least, that was the animal this morning. Yesterday I was a gouty ostrich, and I suppose we shall go through the whole menagerie."
"You like him?" Hildegarde said interrogatively.
"He is very kind, in his way," replied Jack. "Awfully kind, and he loves my father, and I know he wants to do things for me; but—it all has to be done in his way, don't you see? And—well, there isn't anything in me except music. I know that, you see, Hildegarde. Just nothing!"
"I don't feel so sure of that!" Hildegarde said. "Perhaps you never tried to develop the other side of you. There must be other sides, you know."