The Doctor enjoyed his thoughts a little while; and then, with a graver, and something of a confidential tone,—
"If Harry should talk to you about his future, do not encourage that little vein of Quixotism that runs in his blood."
"The enterprise of the Pilgrim Fathers was somewhat Quixotic,—was it not?"
"Certainly it was; you would not have found me among them."
Again a silence, which I left the Doctor to break.
"At any rate, I need not begin to disturb myself already. He will not enter upon active life before he has prepared himself well. That I know. And preparation, as he understands it, involves long work and hard. But I sometimes almost think in good earnest that he has come into the world in the wrong age. He is made for great times, and he has fallen on very little ones. These are the days of the supple and the winding, not of the strong and the straightforward."
"Since he has been sent to these times," I answered, "without doubt his part in them has been marked out for him."
Dr. Borrow's brow lowered. It seemed he had a misgiving that the part allotted to Harry might not be that which he himself would have assigned to him.
Here some flowers at a little distance caught the Doctor's eye, and he ran off to examine them. They were not to his purpose, and were left to nod and wave away their life unconscious that a great danger and a great honor had been near them. When he came back, the cloud had passed. He began talking pleasantly, and still on the subject on which I most wished to hear him talk.
Harry has not always been an only son. He had once a brother, to whom he was fondly, even passionately, attached. After his brother's death, a deeper thoughtfulness was seen in him. He was not changed, but matured and strengthened.