certainly had not given him
unmixed pleasure, as he felt that it ought to have done; but at the same
time he was aware that he neither grudged nor envied Nicholas his good
fortune, and that this unamiable frame of mind would nevertheless
probably be ascribed to him, if he betrayed any dissatisfaction or
disapproval. The truth was that he could not help feeling some
mortification at the way in which both Mr. Polymathers and his
grandfather assumed the forge to be his destiny and portion in life. Dan
did not by any means despise it: he took an interest in the work, and a
pride in the fact that farmers sent their horses thither from beyond the
Town, so well reputed was old Felix O'Beirne's shoeing. But it did not
follow that he wanted to be a blacksmith all his days. Even if he had
done so, he was sixteen, and consequently of an age to resent any
prescribed calling, especially since he knew that the selection here had
been made as the result of an unfavourable comparison of his abilities
with those of another person. "Dan is no fool, mind you," Mr.
Polymathers had said once. "But for intellect you need never name him on
the same day of the month as Nicholas," a verdict which fell with a
slight shock upon Dan, accustomed to the precedence given by two years'
seniority, superior strength, and a more practical turn of mind. What
was far more serious, however, Dan secretly cherished an ambition of his
own. It took the form of thinking that it would be a wonderfully fine
thing if he could ever get to learn the doctoring, and be able to drive
about on a car like Dr. Hamilton, with a name and a remedy for
everybody's ailment. A particularly fine thing it seemed to understand
the construction of bones and joints, a knowledge which would put it in
his power to prevent people from coming to such grief as, for instance,
poor Matt Haloran down at Duffclane, who must limp on a crooked leg to
the end of his days, because the man who pulled in his dislocated ankle
for him had made a botch of it, through not knowing rightly what he was
about. Dan had been much impressed, too, by several cases where a few
drops of brown stuff out of a bottle had put people to sleep when
various aches and pains had long hindered them from closing an eye, a
result which the neighbours were occasionally disposed to view with
mistrust, as rather probably wrought through the agency of "some quare
ould pishtrogues (charms)," but which to Dan's mind proved the
po