“If you can,” said Mr. Ogilvie, struck by the contrast with the little brother.

“That’s what I want to do,” said Bobus; “to deal with real things, not words and empty fancies.  I know languages are necessary; but if one can read a Latin book, and understand a Greek technical term, that’s all that is of use.  If my uncle won’t let me study physical science in Germany, I had rather go on here, where I can be let alone to study it for myself.”

“I do not think you understand what you would throw away.  What is the difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?”

“Higg can do that one thing just by instinct.  He is uneducated.”

“And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full training and expansion.  If you mean to be a great surgeon—-”

“I don’t mean to be a surgeon.”

“A physician then.”

“No, sir.  Please don’t let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice, at everyone’s beck and call.  I’ve seen too much of that.  I mean to get a professorship, and have time and apparatus for researches, so as to get to the bottom of everything,” said the boy, with the vast purposes of his age.

“Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school, trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own bent.  Your contempt for the classics shows how one-sided you are growing.  Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated classics.  You would have many more opportunities, and much better ones, of studying physical science than I can provide for you here.”

This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he allowed that it made all the difference.

Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.

“Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth Lawn.”

“Not a good day for it.”

“It is the perplexing sort of day that no one knows whether to call it fine or wet; but Ellen decided on going, as they were to dance in the hall if it rained.  I’m sure her kindness is great, for she takes infinite trouble to make Janet producible!  Poor Janet, you know dressing her is like hanging clothes on a wooden peg, and a peg that won’t stand still, and has curious theories of the beautiful, carried out in a still more curious way.  So when, in terror of our aunt, the whole female household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable, between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure.  Then Ellen and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic mass to order.”