Tom melted. "No, I would hate it. I'm immensely proud of being my father's son. Do you happen to know how father got his first promotion? Uncle told me to-day. He wasn't very much older than I when he went to work. The furnace he was in charge of was cooling fast, and they couldn't control it. He had barrels of oil hoisted to the top of the furnace, and with his own hands he flung them down into the red-hot opening. It saved the company thousands; but what I liked was his doing it himself, and not sending some poor devil of a workman to do it for him."
Joan's dark cheek flushed. "Wasn't that fine? Tom, there are two things I do envy you the chance of doing. Poor me! I shall never be able to do anything fine like that, and I never can knock anybody down. I always wanted to be able to hit out from the shoulder if I needed to, and do deeds of valor like Joan of Arc. Uncle has the most perfect picture of her."
"Don't talk like that, Joan," said Tom, with a humorous look at her. He was at times strikingly like his uncle, with the same unconscious air of gentle breeding, quite different from the man-of-the-world manner he affected whenever he remembered it. "I want you to be like other girls. Fellows don't like peculiar women, and I want my sister to be a toast among my college friends. I suppose father will let me fill the house for the holidays. There's good shooting down there, isn't there?"
"I don't know," said Joan.
"Joan," said Tom, in a still voice, "what are you crying about? You know something you are not telling me, Joan. What is it?"
"Indeed, Tom—"
"Don't try to tell stories, Joan; you don't know how to. Father has some plan for me that I won't like, and you know what it is."
"Oh, Tom, why do you say that; what have I said?"
"Nothing. That's just the trouble. If you don't know anything, deny it." Another long and, to Joan, terrible stillness. "Does father want me to go to work half educated, as he did? There is no earthly necessity for it, as there was with him. If you don't answer, Joan, I shall know that's his plan."
Joan wrung her hands in speechless agony.