"Oh! a sailor, papa. There can't be any question about that."
"Ah! boy, I'll send you to school, and that'll knock all that nonsense
out of your head."
Harry looked at his father wonderingly. He could not understand what
his father meant any more than if he had talked Greek.
"Draw your stool near my knee, my lad, and I'll suggest to you what
you'll be, and you shall choose. Well, then, first and foremost, how
would you like to be a doctor? Fine thing to be a doctor, drive about
in a beautiful white-lined carriage, have the entree of all the best
houses, have a splendid house yourself, and--"
"Nasty man!" said Harry.
"Who?" said Mr Milvaine.
"Why, the doctor to be sure. Dear papa, I wouldn't take physic myself
even, and I'm sure I wouldn't ask anybody else to. No, papa, I'll be a
sailor."
"Well, how would you like to enter the Church? how would you like to be
a clergyman? No one in the world so highly respected as a clergyman.
He is fit to sit down side by side with royalty itself, and his holy
mission, Harold--"
"Stop, stop, papa. I say my prayers every morning and I say my prayers
every night, but somehow I go and do naughty things just the same. You
know I tree'd poor guvie for a whole night, and I tease poor Towsie, and
I slew the Cochin China cock. No, no, dear papa; I'm not good enough to
be a clergyman. I'll be a sailor."
"Well, how would you like to enter business, and rise, perhaps, to be
Lord Mayor of London, and ride in a gilded coach, and live in a house
like a palace--"
"Papa, papa, don't; I would rather live in the beech tree in the forest
than in a palace. I'll be a sailor."
His father bent down, and took Harry's hand in his. "Wouldn't you like
to stay at home and help your papa, when he grows old, to farm, and take
your poor old mother to church every Sunday on your arm?"
"If you wished it very much, papa; but you see, papa--"
The boy ceased speaking, and gazed into the fire for fully a minute.
Then up he jumped and clapped his hands.
"Ha?" he laughed, "I have it, dear papa. I have it. I'll do both."
"Both what?"
"Why, I'll go to sea first, and visit all kinds of strange places and
strange countries, and kill, oh! such lots of lions and tigers and
savages; and then, papa, come back and help you to farm, and take my
mamma to church. Isn't it fun?"
His father laughed, and took up his pipe. Shouldn't wonder, he thought
to himself, but there may be some little truth in that old saying: "The
child is the father of the man."
Book 1--CHAPTER FIVE.