"It's a bank," he answered proudly; "Mr. Duncan got me in. I didn't say anything to anybody till I got it settled. But I wrote the application myself—and they said it was the best letter they ever got from an applicant," a slight flush of pride on the boyish face. "And Mr. Duncan says there's other work I can get to do—at nights—and I'll be able to support myself from the start," his breath coming fast with growing excitement as he turned his eyes first on his father and then on me.
"You shan't," I cried, with sudden fear, as it broke on me that he was actually going away. Our poverty was as nothing then. "Oh, Harold, you mustn't—I cannot let you go," and I clung to him as though he were going away that selfsame hour.
Gordon seemed unable to speak, sitting still and staring at the boy. Harold's cheeks were glowing and his eyes were sparkling; his arm was still about me.
Suddenly my husband found a voice, breaking out into a torrent of remonstrance. Really, it was quite unlike him to grow so agitated—but Gordon's whole life was in his children. "If your mother and I can stand it, there's no reason why you should object," he pleaded, after many other arguments had been pressed in vain. But Harold was immovable; his word had been passed, he said, and he would not recede from it.
"Let the laddie gang," came suddenly from grandfather's chair in the corner. I think we had forgotten he was there. "It's the auld way o' the world—the bairnies must leave the nest some time," he added, his own voice shaking. "An' his faither's God wull ha'e him in His guid an' holy keeping—the Almichty'll find the path for him. Come here, my laddie," and he held out his arms. Harold came over, wondering; the patriarch laid his hands in blessing on his head, and then committed him to God in words of such beauty as I think I never heard before.
But Gordon protested long and earnestly. "Anything but the bank," he said at last; "I cannot bear, my son, to think of you in a bank."
"That's what I think," I cried, eagerly seconding; "they make them work so hard—and it's all indoors—and Harold's not overly strong," I pleaded, careless of the splendid form that stood beside grandfather's chair.
"That has nothing to do with it," Gordon interrupted in his abrupt way; "it's not of that I'm thinking at all. It's the peril of the thing, my son—the danger, the temptations—just to think of the money that passes through a lad's hands when he's put into a bank. And that's how so many of them are ruined—for time and eternity," he added solemnly.
"Oh, Gordon," I cried in protest, "you don't mean stealing, Gordon, stealing money—you don't mean that?"
"That's exactly what I mean," said Gordon, untrained to subterfuge. "I mean the peril of handling so much money."