Johnny flushed with pleasure.  The letter had cost him much thought and pains, and commendation from his father was rare.

“But it will take a great deal of consideration.”

“Yes,” said Johnny.  “You don’t disapprove, do you, papa?”

“Well,” said the Colonel, in his ponderous way, “you have advantages, you know, and you might do better for yourself.”

There was a quivering impulse on Johnny’s lips to say that it was not to himself that he wanted to do good; but when his father was speaking in that deliberate manner, he was not to be interrupted, and there was nothing for it but to hear him out.

“Your aunt is providing you with the best of educations, you have good abilities and industry, and you will be a well-looking fellow besides,” added the Colonel, glancing over him with an approving eye of fatherly satisfaction; “and it seems to me that you could succeed in some superior line.  Your mother and I had always hoped to see you at the bar.  Every opportunity for distinction is given you, and I do not understand this sudden desire to throw them up for a profession of much greater drudgery and fewer chances of rising, unless it were from some influence of your aunt.”

“She never spoke of it.  She does not know that I have thought of it, nor of my letter to you.”

“Then it is simply from enthusiasm for this young doctor?”

“Not exactly,” said John, “but I always wished I could be like my uncle.  I remember hearing mamma read a bit of one of the letters of condolence which said ’His was one of the most beautiful lives I have ever known,’ and I never forgot it.  It stayed in my mind like a riddle, till I gradually found out that the beauty was in the good he was always doing—-”

“Ah!” said the Colonel, in a tone betokening that he was touched, and which encouraged John to continue,—-

“Besides, I really do like and enter into scientific subjects better than any others; I believe it is my turn.”

“Perhaps-—you do sometimes put me in mind of your uncle.  But why have you only spoken of it now?”

“I don’t think I really considered what I should be,” said John.  “There was quite enough to think of with work, and cricket, and all the rest, till this spring, when I have been off it all, and then when I talked it over with Dr. Medlicott, he settled my mind about various things that I wanted to know.”

“Did he persuade you?”

“No more than saying that I managed well for Jock when I was left alone with him, and that he thought I had the makings of a doctor in me.  He loves his profession of course, and thinks it a grand one.  Yes, papa, indeed I think it is.  To be always learning the ways of God’s working, for the sake of lessening all the pain and grief in the world-—”

“Johnny!  That’s almost what my brother said to me thirty years ago, and what did it come to?  Being at the beck and call night and day of every beggar in London, and dying at last in his prime, of disease caught in their service.”