or stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond
which were sleeping and bath-rooms.

Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while
Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the
latter carefully in two, and lit one half.

"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal
beginning after they should be closeted and seated,--"I've been
thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm
rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,--before I
take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more
in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I
ought to have got ahead a little by that time."

Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He
wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it.

"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?"

"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'--as Nurse Pond used
to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough
to do for a gentleman,--a _man_, I hope. But I _should_ like to take
hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want
to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want
something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't
take care of myself--and more."

"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door."

After that, of course, we cannot listen.

They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr.
Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two
little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which
his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at
this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and
wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched
sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of
his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What
he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned
to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that
heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man,
can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they
came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,--

"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,--for
both your sakes."

"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were
young."

"Don't I?" said his father