'Well,' I said.
'Then I hope it may do you good then!' he cried, 'I am only saying it in that hope. I think too well of you to believe that you're blind to your own faults: and it may do you some good to see yourself as others see you.—And that's all I've got to say.'
A pause.
At last he, slowly and not unsoftly:
'I'm going away this evening. . . . Mother McCarthy told you p'r'aps?. . . For good. . . . I shall be sorry to go. . . . My father is a silk merchant, and he wants me to enter his office. He's come up here to take me home. . . . The dear old dad!. . . Well (he gave his shoulders a little shrug) . . . I suppose I shall be going abroad soon. There's a branch out in China he wants me to go to . . . or something like that'
Another pause.
Then:
'Do you want to go?' I said.
'No,' he said. 'No, I don't,' (He made a movement in his chair.) 'It's the last thing I should choose myself. But only one man in a thousand in this world can choose the profession he likes. . . . I'm my father's only son, you see,' he added.
'Well?' I said.
'Well, the long and the short of it is . . . that I wish you wouldn't . . . You know what I mean, Leicester. I don't want to preach to you, but I somehow think you really might . . . might do so much better, if you liked. You'll be a great man some day . . . if you live, that is, and God wills it.'
'What?' said I.
'Did you ever know a man called Blake?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said, 'I did. Why?'
'Did you know he was dead?'
I was startled. I looked at him sharply.
'Dead?' I said.
'Yes. He died a little while ago.'
'How?'
'It was an accident. He fell off a ladder somehow, and his head struck upon a stone, and it gashed a great
