"Eh!" said Mrs Hamps enthusiastically, after a trifling pause. "It
does me good when I think what a _help_ you'll be to your father in the
business, with that clever head of yours."
She gazed at him fondly.
Now this was Edwin's chance. He did not wish to be any help at all to
his father in the business. He had other plans for himself. He had never
mentioned them before, because his father had never talked to him about
his future career, apparently assuming that he would go into the
business. He had been waiting for his father to begin. "Surely," he
had said to himself "father's bound to speak to me sometime about what
I'm going to do, and when he does I shall just tell him." But his
father never had begun; and by timidity, negligence, and perhaps
ill-luck, Edwin had thus arrived at his last day at school with the
supreme question not merely unsolved but unattacked. Oh he blamed
himself! Any ordinary boy (he thought) would have discussed such a
question naturally long ago. After all, it was not a crime, it was no
cause for shame, to wish not to be a printer. Yet he was ashamed!
Absurd! He blamed himself. But he also blamed his father. Now,
however, in responding to his auntie's remark, he could remedy all the
past by simply and boldly stating that he did not want to follow his
father. It would be unpleasant, of course, but the worst shock would be
over in a moment, like the drawing of a tooth. He had merely to utter
certain words. He must utter them. They were perfectly easy to say,
and they were also of the greatest urgency. "I don't want to be a
printer." He mumbled them over in his mind. "I don't want to be a
printer." What could it matter to his father whether he was a printer
or not? Seconds, minutes, seemed to pass. He knew that if he was so
inconceivably craven as to remain silent, his self-respect would never
recover from the blow. Then, in response to Mrs Hamps's prediction
about his usefulness to his father in the business, he said, with a
false-jaunty, unconvinced, unconvincing air--
"Well, that remains to be seen."
This was all he could accomplish. It seemed as if he had looked death
itself in the face, and drawn away.
"Remains to be _seen_?" Auntie Clara repeated, with a hint of startled
pain, due to this levity.
He was mute. No one suspected, as he sat there, so boyish, wistful, and
uneasily squirming, that he was agonised to the very centre of his
being. All the time, in his sweating soul, he kept trying to persuade
himself: "I've given them a hint, anyhow! I've given them a hint,
anyhow!"
"Them" included everybody at the table.
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