I
think of asking you to spend a part of the day at the mills this summer.
You will have to learn the business, for as you know your own property,
your aunt's and mine are largely invested in our works. I thought too of
an engineering school for you in the fall, and then of the School of
Mines in Paris. It is a long look ahead, but it would fit you to relieve
me of my work. Think it over, my son. How does it look to you, or have
you thought of what you mean or want to do? Don't answer me now--think it
over. And now I have some letters to write. Good-night."
John went upstairs to bed with much to think about, and above all else of
the disappointing summer before him and the wish he had long cherished,
but which his uncle's last words had made it necessary for him to
reconsider.
Ann Penhallow had made a characteristic fight against the combined forces
of the doctor and her husband. She had declared she would give up this
and that, if only she could be left at home. She showed to the doctor an
irritability quite new to his experience of her and which he accepted as
added evidence of need of change. Her bodily condition and her want of
common sense in a matter so clear to him troubled the Squire and drove
him to his usual resort when worried--long rides or hard tramps with his
gun.
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