l, I believe. Minnie is off for a week at the
mountains; Eunice is at home."

"Oh! How would you like some green goose, with apple-sauce,
sweet-potatoes, and succotash?"

"It seems to me that was pretty good, the last time. All right, if you
like it."

"I don't know that I care for anything much. I'm a little off my feed.
No soup," he said, looking up at the waiter bending over him; and then
he gave the order. "I think you may bring me half a dozen Blue Points,
if they're good," he called after him.

"Didn't Bar Harbour agree with you--or Campobello?" asked Mr. Mavering,
taking the opening offered him.

"No, not very well," said Dan; and he said no more about it, leaving
his father to make his own inferences as to the kind or degree of the
disagreement.

"Well, have you made up your mind?" asked the father, resting his elbows
on either side of his plate, and putting his hands together softly,
while he looked across them with a cheery kindness at his boy.

"Yes, I have," said Dan slowly.

"Well?"

"I don't believe I care to go into the law."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's all right, then. I wished you to choose freely, and I
suppose you've done so."

"Oh Yes."

"I think you've chosen wisely, and I'm very glad. It's a weight off my
mind. I think you'll be happier in the business than you would in the
law; I think you'll enjoy it. You needn't look forward to a great deal
of Ponkwasset Falls, unless you like."

"I shouldn't mind going there," said Dan listlessly.

"It won't be necessary--at first. In fact, it won't be desirable. I want
you to look up the business at this end a little."

Dan gave a start. "In Boston?"

"Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a place
of our own, and to put you in charge." Something in the young man's
face expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, "Would that be
distasteful to you?"

"Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I care
to be in Boston." He lifted his face and looked his father full in the
eyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then the
father knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong.

The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which they
could be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, and
cumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind,
he withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk.