Phebe, Her Profession Part 26

"Mr. Barrett spent half the morning with us, Cicely," Hubert said, as she came to the table. "Where were you, to miss your chances?"

"Gallivanting with another young man," she said. "But was he really and truly there? What did he talk about?"

"Soft-sh.e.l.l crabs."

"How unromantic! What else?"

"Welsh rarebit, if you must know."

"Was that all? Didn't he talk any music?"

"No; only the music of his own speech. It's not manners to talk shop, Cis."

"Oh, but I do wish I could meet him!" she sighed. "Is he ever coming here to the Lodge?"

"Perhaps, if we hang Babe out for bait. He appears to have her on the brain. He asked, to-day, apropos of nothing in particular, whether Miss McAlister were not very intellectual."

"I hope you a.s.sured him that she was," Billy remarked.

"I did. Trust me for upholding the family reputation. I told him that she had a receptive mind and would be an ornament to any profession."

"Hubert!" his sister remonstrated.

"Well, why not? Babe is able to hold her own, whether she turns her attention to the ministry or to coaching athletic teams, and it is only fair to give her the honest meed of praise."

"Cousin Ted," Cicely said earnestly, after a pause; "I wish you would ask Mr. Barrett here to supper, some night. I want so much to meet him."

"Why, Cicely, I never supposed you were such a lion-hunter." Theodora's tone, though gentle, conveyed a distinct rebuke.

"It isn't just silly wanting to meet him," she said, as her color came.

"I do want to know him, to hear him play and talk, because there isn't anybody else whose work I love as I do his. I used to feel that way about yours, Cousin Ted, and want to know you on account of your books; but now I forget all about them. It's different with Mr. Barrett. He doesn't seem especially interesting. He looks conceited and he toes in; but his work is wonderful. Besides, I want to have him hear me play. He looks as if he wouldn't mind telling disagreeable truths, and I want somebody to tell me whether I am wasting all my time, trying to do something that is impossible. I don't care whether he eats crabs or clams; he may eat with his knife, if he wants to. All I'm after is his music."

Theodora laughed at her outburst.

"I will do what I can for you, Cis; but I am afraid it is a forlorn hope. I don't believe he is a man who can be coaxed into talking shop, and I fear he hasn't the least idea of accepting any invitations, while he is down here. I will try to get him; but you may be driven into taking a piano down on the beach and discoursing sweet music to him, while he bathes."

"Bathes!" Cicely's tone was a faint echo of Phebe's. "He doesn't bathe; he paddles. No matter! Some day, I'll get what I want." But happily she had no foreknowledge of the circ.u.mstances under which she would talk of music with Gifford Barrett.

An hour later, Allyn and his father were driving away across the moors.

It takes good seamans.h.i.+p to bear the motion of a Quantuck box cart; it requires still better seamans.h.i.+p to navigate one of them along the rutted roads. For some time, it took all of Dr. McAlister's energy to keep from landing himself and Allyn head foremost in the thickets of sweet fern and beach plum. By degrees, however, he became more expert in avoiding pitfalls and in keeping both wheels in the ruts, and he turned to Allyn expectantly.

"Well, Allyn, what was it?"

For two days, Allyn had been preparing himself on various circuitous routes by which he might approach his subject and slowly prepare his father's mind for the plea he wished to make. Now, however, his father had taken him by surprise, and accordingly he blurted out the whole plain truth.

"Papa, I don't want to go to college. I want to be an engineer."

Back in the depths of Dr. McAlister's eyes, there came an expression which, under other conditions, might have developed into a smile. The boy's tone was anxious and pleading, out of all proportion to the gravity of his subject; but Dr. McAlister wisely forbore to smile. All his life, he had made it his rule never to laugh at the earnestness of his children, but to treat it with the fullest respect.

"A civil engineer?" he asked, thinking that Allyn was attracted by the profession of his brother-in-law.

"No; just a plain, everyday engineer that runs machinery. I wish you'd let me. There's no use in my going through college; I'm too stupid about lots of things, and I never could make a decent doctor."

"What makes you think you could make a decent engineer?" the doctor questioned keenly.

"Because I love it. I like wheels and beams and valves so much better than I like syntax and subjunctives," he urged. "I'd be willing to work for it, papa; it's interesting and it really counts for something, when you get it done."

"Perhaps. Is it a new idea, Allyn?"

The boy shook his head.

"It's nearly as old as I am, I believe. Ever since I remember, I have liked such things. I've watched them, whenever I had a chance, and when I couldn't do that, I've looked at pictures of them. I don't suppose I ought to have said anything about it, for I know you want to have me go through college; but I hate my school, and I don't seem to get on any."

"But your marks were higher, last month, than they had been for a year."

"That was Cicely."

"Cicely?"

"Yes, she helped me. I was warned, and would have been conditioned; but she found it out and went at me till she pulled me through. That was how she found out about it."

"About what?"

"This."

"Then Cicely knows?"

"Yes; but n.o.body else. I let it out to her, one day, and she made me show her my drawings. Then she told me that, if I wanted you to listen to me, I'd have to do a good deal better work in school than I had been doing."

The doctor nodded approvingly.

"Cicely has a level head of her own," he said; "but how do I know you aren't trying to s.h.i.+rk school, Allyn?"

Allyn faced him proudly.

"I never lie, and I promise you I'll do my best."

"Well, that's all right." The doctor was coming down to the practical side of the question, and all of a sudden he found that it was not going to be an easy thing for him to relinquish the hope of having one of his sons follow him in his profession. "Do you know what it means, though, Allyn, to be an engineer?"

"I think so." The boy spoke with a quiet dignity which was new to him.

"What?"

"To work eight or ten hours a day in a factory; to begin at the bottom and work up; maybe, at last, to invent a machine of my own."

"Yes." In spite of himself, the doctor's voice was encouraging, for he could not help realizing that the boy had weighed the situation carefully. "But do you know that your work would be in heat and dirt and noise, among men who are not your equals in family and training?"

"Is Jamie Lyman my equal in family?" Allyn demanded. "Or Frank Gavigan, or Peter Hubbard? You don't seem to mind putting me into school with them."