There was a touch of pique in his voice. Clytie noticed it, saw that she had wounded susceptibilities.
“Tell me, Jack, why you want to be a carver and gilder.”
“I could make all the picture-frames for you and Miss Marchpane,” he replied.
“Thank you, Jack,” said Clytie, touched at the boyish idea. “But perhaps we'll make you something better than a carver or gilder. I don't know what you could be. What could we make of you?”
A vague idea of raising Jack above the artisan level had occurred to her during her scrutiny of his face. He was not an ordinary creature. That he should spend his life in the dull, commonplace atmosphere of the British workman seemed a waste of possibilities. There are millions who possess just the qualifications for hewers of wood and drawers of water. Why should a finer organisation not be cultivated, trained, put into an environment where there are conditions for free development? But whether the boy was a potential admiral, Lord Chancellor, or novelist she could not determine. That was why she asked the question, “What could we make of you?” somewhat pathetically. Jack shook his head in reply. He had learned at school that life was a serious thing terminating in apprenticeship.
“I've got to learn a trade,” he replied after a little, “and I'd sooner be a carver and gilder than anything else.”
“But suppose a good fairy were to come, Jack,” persisted Clytie, “and say that you were not to learn a trade, or that, if you did begin, you would work your way out of it, and become a great man, and do glorious things in the world—suppose you were able to choose to be anything you liked—what do you think you would be? Tell me—something great and bright and noble!”
She had grown animated with her enthusiasm, and leaned forward, with her chin raised and lips parted—her attitude in moments of exaltation. The boy looked at her for a few seconds, catching her spirit. Something was at work within him too, for his eyes glowed, and his breath came quickly.
“There is something, Jack. Tell me what it is!”
“I'd like to be a soldier like my father,” he said in a low voice, the extravagant, glowing fancies that had haunted him for six months thus finding half-choked expression.