“How quiet we are, all at once!  But you have a way of finishing up things, Aunt Euphrasia.  You said all I wanted in about fifty words, just now.  I begin to see.  It may be just because I might do something, that I haven’t.  Aunt Euphrasia, I’ve done being a boy, and playing with reins.  I’m going to be a man, and do some real driving.  Do you know, I think I’d better not go to Europe with my father?”

“I don’t know that,” returned Miss Kirkbright.  “It might be; but it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up.  You ought to be quite sure what you stay for.”

“I won’t stay for any nonsense.  I mean to talk with him to-night.”

“Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it all out honestly with him.”

Which advice—­the first clause of it—­Rodney proceeded instantly to follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and passive thing.

When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery stable, he went round to his father’s rooms and took tea with him.

The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, “I want a talk with you, father.  Can I have it now?  I must be back at Cambridge by ten.”

Mr. Sherrett looked in his son’s face.  There was nothing there of uncomfortableness,—­of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter.  He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of “No scrape, I hope, Rod?” The question was asked and answered between their eyes.

“Certainly, my boy,” he said, rising.  “Step in there; the man will be up presently to take away these things.”

The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond which were sleeping and bath-rooms.

Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the latter carefully in two, and lit one half.

“The thing is, father,” said Rodney, not waiting for a formal beginning after they should be closeted and seated,—­“I’ve been thinking that I’d better not go abroad, if you don’t mind.  I’m rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,—­before I take it.  It’s time I was doing something.  If I use up a year or more in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I ought to have got ahead a little by that time.”

Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised.  This was a new phase.  He wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it.

“Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?”

“No.  I don’t think I’ve much of a ’head-piece’—­as Nurse Pond used to say.  At least, in the learned direction.  I’ve just about enough to do for a gentleman,—­a man, I hope.  But I should like to take hold of something and make it go.  I’ll tell you why, father.  I want to see what’s in me in the first place; and then, I might want something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn’t take care of myself—­and more.”