His mother listened in silence to his wonderful tale.  Then she kissed him.

“When you have made a lot of money, will you present me with a new black silk dress,” she asked with a suspicious lustre in her eyes.

“Anything you want, mamma,” he promised solemnly.  “When I begin to make money, you’ll never have to worry any more about anything.”

Again she had to kiss him.

He was then a little more than halfway through his fifteenth year.

XXV

When his father came home that night, Keith hurried across the room to meet him.  “Papa,” he cried full of subdued excitement and a swelling of self-importance such as he had not experienced for ever so long.  “I have got a job.”

“What kind of a job,” asked the father quietly.

“In an office.”  And Keith sputtered out the details.

When the whole story was told, the father stood looking at him enigmatically for a long while.

“Perhaps it is just as well,” he said at last.  “It certainly will make things easier for me.  But bear in mind what I now tell you, boy:  you will live to regret the chance you are throwing away—­a chance for which I would have given one of my hands when I was of your age.”

“Did you want me to go on,” Keith asked uncertainly.

“I did—­I always hoped that you should pass your university examinations and wear the white cap.”

“And what did you want me to become?”

“A civil engineer—­that’s the only real profession today.”

The idea was too novel to be grasped quickly by the boy.  His own thoughts had never strayed in that direction, and his conception of an engineer’s duties and position was extremely vague.

“An engineer,” he repeated.  “But then I should not have studied Latin.”

“Of course not, but you chose it without asking my opinion first.”

Keith’s surprise increased.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” he insisted.

“Because I wanted you to begin to shape your own life,” the father replied, “and I thought you knew what you wanted.”

Keith could hardly believe his own ears.

“What do you want me to do now,” he pleaded at last.

“What you feel you must,” rejoined the father.  “This concerns your life, and not mine.  And you must make up your own mind.  Whatever you decided, you have my good wishes, boy, and I shall try to help you as far as I can.”

For a moment Keith had a sense of never having known his father before. 
Then a thought flashed through his head:  why did he not speak before?

He went into the parlour and stood at the window staring at the gloomy facade of the distillers across the lane.  A motley throng of thoughts chased each other through his brain.

It was not yet too late.  Nothing was settled.  He could still drop the job and go back to school if he wanted.  But did he want it?