"What mark are you aiming at, boys? — what are you setting before you as the object of life?"
"What mark, mother?" said Rufus after an instant's pause.
"Yes."
"To make something of myself!" he said rising, and with that fire-flashing nostril and lip that spoke his whole soul at work. "I have a chance now, and it will go hard but I will accomplish it."
The mother's eye turned to her other son.
"I believe I must say the same, mother," he replied gravely. "I have perhaps some notion of doing, afterwards; but the first thing is to be myself what I can be. I am not, I feel, a tithe of that now."
"I agree with you — you are right, so far," answered the mother, turning her face again to the fire; — "but in the end, what is it you would do, and would be?"
"Profession, do you mean, mamma?" said Rufus.
"No," she said; and he needed not to ask any more.
"I mean, what is all this for? — what purpose lies behind all this?"