If your hands are empty, you must at
any rate be able to show that they won't always continue so."
"Well, but I don't want to think about that just now; I can be a farmer,
or a clerk; I can make a living with my body, if I can't with my mind;
and I can write to Mrs. Vanderplanck, some time, and find out just how
things are."
"Very well--very well! or perhaps I'd better write to her
myself--well--and as long as you are on your back, there'll be no use in
troubling you with business--that's certain! And perhaps things may turn
out better than they look, in the end."
As Professor Valeyon pronounced this latter sentence, he smiled to
himself pleasantly and mysteriously. He seemed to fancy he had stronger
grounds for believing in a happy issue, than, for some reason, he was at
liberty to disclose. And the smile lingered about the corners of his
mouth and eyes, as if the issue in question were to be of that
peculiarly harmonious kind usually supposed to be reserved for the
themes of poems, or the conclusions of novels.
"I never was interested to hear of the every-day lives of men who have
loved, and wanted to make their way in the world; for I never expected I
should be such a man. Now, I'm sorry; it would have been useful to me,
wouldn't it?"
"Perhaps it might," responded the old gentleman, musing at the change in
the attitude of the young man's mind--once so self-sufficient and
assertive, now so dependent and inexperienced.
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