“You do not feel that you are under obligations to your Family? I don’t like to believe that you have so slight a sense of your responsibilities. No, I am sure that a few moments reflection will convince you to the contrary. By all means consider the matter. I should, however, like to have your answer to-night, if it is convenient for you. I have several letters to write, and shall be here when you have reached your decision.” And with a curt nod, he swung around to his desk, and took up the old-fashioned goose-quill pen, which he was in the habit of using under the impression that it lent him an air of business solidity.
Paul, lost in thought, went up to Carl’s room for the “few moments of reflection” that his uncle had advised.
His cousin, wearing a brown dressing gown, with a hideous pattern of yellow fleurs-de-lis, was sitting at the table, with a book in his hands, and a greenshade over his nearsighted eyes, engrossed in his studies. The two boys glanced at each other, and nodded brusquely without speaking.
Paul threw himself across the bed.
“Duty! Providence!” All he could see in the matter was that he had got into a pretty kettle of fish. “And uncle thinks that just because I’m broke, I’ll knuckle under without a murmur.”
Obligations! That was a nice thing to preach to him.
“Would you mind not kicking the bed?” said Carl’s thin, querulous voice. “It makes it rather hard to concentrate.” This petition, uttered in a studiedly polite tone, was accompanied by a dark look, which this time, however, Paul failed to see.
“Sorry,” said Paul, gruffly, and got up.
Now he began to walk the floor; but at length stopped at the window, pressing his face to the glass so that he could see something besides the reflection of his cousin’s mouse-colored head, and monotonous rocking in his chair.
He peered out over the roofs of the town, up the street, all sleek and shining with the rain, in the direction of the cross-roads at which he had stood, less than four hours ago. Why hadn’t he taken the Other One, anyway? He had been perfectly free to choose—no one had been preaching Duty and all the rest of it to him then. He hadn’t taken it, because he had been tired and hungry, and almost penniless—and lonely, too, and the farmer had turned up. Perhaps he had been a coward. It had led to the City, where, even if he were penniless, he would at least have been his own master, free to work according to his own ideas, and not Uncle Peter’s.