The view from the back windows of most city houses is not calculated to arouse enthusiasm at the best of times, and the day was singularly dispiriting:  a sky of lead and a drizzling rain, which emphasized the squalor of the back yards in view.  It was all very depressing.  Jeffrey’s talk, though inconclusive, had stirred in John’s mind an uneasiness which was near to apprehension.  He turned and walked about the familiar room, recognizing the well-known furniture, his mother’s picture over the mantel, the bookshelves filled with his boyhood’s accumulations, the well-remembered pattern of the carpet, and the wall-paper—­nothing was changed.  It was all as he had left it two years ago, and for the time it seemed as if he had merely dreamed the life and experiences of those years.  Indeed, it was with difficulty that he recalled any of them for the moment.  And then suddenly there came into his mind the thought that he was at the beginning of a new epoch—­that on this day his boyhood ended, for up to then he had been but a boy.  The thought was very vivid.  It had come, the time when he must take upon himself the responsibilities of his own life, and make it for himself; the time which he had looked forward to as to come some day, but not hitherto at any particular moment, and so not to be very seriously considered.

It has been said that life had always been made easy for him, and that he had accepted the situation without protest.  To easy-going natures the thought of any radical change in the current of affairs is usually unwelcome, but he was too young to find it really repugnant; and then, too, as he walked about the room with his hands in his pockets, it was further revealed to him that he had recently found a motive and impulse such as he had never had before.  He recalled the talk that he had had with the companion of his voyage.  He thought of her as one who could be tender to misfortune and charitable to incapacity, but who would have nothing but scorn for shiftlessness and malingering; and he realized that he had never cared for anything as for the good opinion of that young woman.  No, there should be for him no more sauntering in the vales and groves, no more of loitering or dallying.  He would take his place in the working world, and perhaps—­some day—­

A thought came to him with the impact of a blow:  What could he do?  What work was there for him?  How could he pull his weight in the boat?  All his life he had depended upon some one else, with easy-going thoughtlessness.  Hardly had it ever really occurred to him that he might have to make a career for himself.  Of business he had thought as something which he should undertake some time, but it was always a business ready made to his hand, with plenty of capital not of his own acquiring—­something for occupation, not of necessity.  It came home to him that his father was his only resource, and that of his father’s affairs he knew next to nothing.