“It is a very fine field, India,” said my uncle, sententiously. “It is the nursery of captains.”
“Is it? Those plants take up a great deal of ground, then, that might be more profitably cultivated. And, indeed, considering that the tallest captains in the world will be ultimately set into a box not above seven feet at the longest, it is astonishing what a quantity of room that species of arbor mortis takes in the growing! However, Pisistratus, to return to your request, I will think it over, and talk to Trevanion.”
“Or rather to Lady Ellinor,” said I imprudently: my mother slightly shivered, and took her hand from mine. I felt cut to the heart by the slip of my own tongue.
“That, I think, your mother could do best,” said my father, drily, “if she wants to be quite convinced that somebody will see that your shirts are aired. For I suppose they mean you to lodge at Trevanion’s.”
“Oh, no!” cried my mother. “He might as well go to college then. I thought he was to stay with us; only go in the morning, but, of course, sleep here.”
“If I know any thing of Trevanion,” said my father, “his secretary will be expected to do without sleep. Poor boy, you don’t know what it is you desire. And yet, at your age, I—” my father stopped short. “No!” he renewed abruptly, after a long silence, and as if soliloquising. “No, man is never wrong while he lives for others. The philosopher who contemplates from the rock, is a less noble image than the sailor who struggles with the storm. Why should there be two of us? And could he be an alter ego, even if I wished it? impossible!” My father turned on his chair, and, laying the left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as he bent down to look me full in the face; “But, Pisistratus, will you promise me always to wear the saffron bag?”
CHAPTER XXIV.
I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered by Trevanion—“I promise you one thing—he shall never be idle!”
Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most prone, when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely on the world of men. I was naturally so joyous, that I should have made college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a phthisis.
And my father, too, was right, that, though I could study, I was not meant for a student.