"Yes, yes; as usual, I believe. Minnie is off for a week at the mountains; Eunice is at home.""Oh! How would you like some green goose, with apple-sauce, sweet-potatoes, and succotash?"
"It seems to me that was pretty good, the last time. All right, if you like it.""I don't know that I care for anything much. I'm a little off my feed.
No soup," he said, looking up at the waiter bending over him; and then he gave the order. "I think you may bring me half a dozen Blue Points, if they're good," he called after him.
"Didn't Bar Harbour agree with you--or Campobello?" asked Mr. Mavering, taking the opening offered him.
"No, not very well," said Dan; and he said no more about it, leaving his father to make his own inferences as to the kind or degree of the disagreement.
"Well, have you made up your mind?" asked the father, resting his elbows on either side of his plate, and putting his hands together softly, while he looked across them with a cheery kindness at his boy.
"Yes, I have," said Dan slowly.
"Well?"
"I don't believe I care to go into the law.""Sure?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's all right, then. I wished you to choose freely, and Isuppose you've done so."
"Oh Yes."
"I think you've chosen wisely, and I'm very glad. It's a weight off my mind. I think you'll be happier in the business than you would in the law; I think you'll enjoy it. You needn't look forward to a great deal of Ponkwasset Falls, unless you like.""I shouldn't mind going there," said Dan listlessly.
"It won't be necessary--at first. In fact, it won't be desirable. Iwant you to look up the business at this end a little."Dan gave a start. "In Boston?"
"Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a place of our own, and to put you in charge." Something in the young man's face expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, "Would that be distasteful to you?""Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I care to be in Boston." He lifted his face and looked his father full in the eyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then the father knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong.
The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which they could be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, and cumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind, he withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk.
"Well," said the elder lightly, as if Dan's not caring to be in Boston had no particular significance for him, "I don't know that I care to have you settle down to it immediately. I rather think I'd like to have you look about first a little. Go to New York, go to Philadelphia, and see their processes there. We can't afford to get old-fashioned in our ways.
I've always been more interested by the aesthetic side of the business, but you ought to have a taste for the mechanism, from your grandfather;your mother has it."
"Oh yes, sir. I think all that's very interesting," said Dan.
"Well, go to France, and see how those fellows do it. Go to London, and look up William Morris.""Yes, that would be very nice," admitted the young fellow, beginning to catch on. "But I didn't suppose--I didn't expect to begin life with a picnic." He entered upon his sentence with a jocular buoyancy, but at the last word, which he fatally drifted upon, his voice fell. He said to himself that he was greatly changed; that, he should never be gay and bright again; there would always be this undercurrent of sadness; he had noticed the undercurrent yesterday when he was laughing and joking with those girls at Portland.
"Oh, I don't want you to buckle down at once," said his father, smiling.
"If you'd decided upon the law, I should have felt that you'd better not lose time. But as you're going into the business, I don't mind your taking a year off. It won't be lost time if you keep your eyes open. Ithink you'd better go down into Italy and Spain. Look up the old tapestries and stamped leathers. You may get some ideas. How would you like it?""First-rate. I should like it," said Dan, rising on the waft of his father's suggestion, but gloomily lapsing again. Still, it was pleasing to picture himself going about through Europe with a broken heart, and he did not deny himself the consolation of the vision.
"Well, there's nobody to dislike it," said his father cheerily. He was sure now that Dan had been jilted; otherwise he would have put forth some objection to a scheme which must interrupt his lovemaking. "There's no reason why, with our resources, we shouldn't take the lead in this business."He went on to speak more fully of his plans, and Dan listened with a nether reference of it all to Alice, but still with a surface intelligence on which nothing was lost.
"Are you going home with me to-morrow?" asked his father as they rose from the table.
"Well, perhaps not to-morrow. I've got some of my things to put together in Cambridge yet, and perhaps I'd better look after them. But I've a notion I'd better spend the winter at home, and get an idea of the manufacture before I go abroad. I might sail in January; they say it's a good month.""Yes, there's sense in that," said his father.
"And perhaps I won't break up in Cambridge till I've been to New York and Philadelphia. What do you think? It's easier striking them from here.""I don't know but you're right," said his father easily.
