going to be
something, some kind of a person, and don't really know a bit what kind?
Yet I feel very much me already...."

"I'm going to be a soldier," said Polkinghorne, serenely missing any
metaphysical proposition. He looked forward, on the strength of a
Scottish mother, to joining a Highland regiment, and was known to shave
his knees twice a week to make them of a manly hairiness against the
donning of a kilt.

"I shall have to go into the City like my guv'nor, I suppose," admitted
little Moss, "but I don't see why one shouldn't be the kind of chap one
wants all the same. Your father's in the city, too, isn't he,
Killigrew?"

"Yes, but that's no reason why I should be, and I'm jolly well not going
to. I'm going to be an artist like Turner...." And Killigrew's voice
unconsciously took on a singing inflection of rapture.

"There's no doubt about old Carminow, anyway," observed Polkinghorne, to
be greeted with laughter. For Carminow, though the gentlest of
creatures, took an extraordinary delight in all the agonies of human
nature. Mine accidents had hardly occurred before Carminow, by some
subtle agency, seemed aware of them, and had rushed to the scene, out of
bounds or not. It was with genuine simplicity that he once bewailed the
fact that it had been "an awfully dull half--no one had been killed for
miles around." It was he, too, on the occasion of a terrible tragedy in
the High Street, when Teague the baker had been killed by the lashing
hoofs of his new horse, who had rushed out to superintend the removal of
the body. The widow, clamorous with her sudden grief, had seized his
arm, exclaiming "Oh, Master Carminow, whatever shall I do; whatever
shall I do?" and, in all good faith he, his soul still unsatisfied by
the view of the corpse, had replied kindly: "Do? Why, Mrs. Teague, if I
were you I should have him opened...."

The story had lived against Carminow, and when in doubt about any course
of action he was always advised to "have it opened." He did not join now
in the laugh, but said seriously, failing, as always, to pronounce the
letter "r":

"Of course I shall be a doctor. Last holidays I went a lot to Guy's
where I have a chum, and I saw a lot of dissecting. Do you know that
when they dissect 'em they stick a sort of squirt in their chests and
dwaw off all the blood? I've got a theowy that I mean to put into
pwactice some day. It seemed to me such a shame that all that good blood
should go to waste