His honors are budding betimes. That is the joy of an artistic
life--you work, but it is amongst flowers. Christie will be famous
before he is thirty, and he is easy in his circumstances now: he will
never be more, never rich; he is too open-handed for that. But I shall
have years and years to toil and wait," Harry concluded with a
melancholy, humorous fall in his voice, half mocking at himself and half
pathetic, and the same was his countenance.
All the more earnestly did Bessie brighten: "You knew that, Harry, when
you chose the law. But if you work amongst bookworms and cobwebs, don't
you play in the sunshine?"
"Now and then, Bessie, but there will be less and less of that if I
maintain my high endeavors."
"You will, Harry, you must! You will never be satisfied else. But there
is no sentiment in the law--it is dreary, dreary."
"No sentiment in the law? It is a laborious calling, but many honorable
men follow it; and are not the lawyers continually helping those to
right who suffer wrong?"
"That is not the vulgar idea of them, is it? But I believe it is what
you will always strive to do, Harry." Bessie spoke with pretty
eagerness. She feared that she might have seemed to contemn Harry's
vocation, and she hastened to make amends. Harry understood her
perfectly, and had the impudence to laugh at her quite in his old boyish
way. A little confused--also in the old way--she ran on: "I have seen
the judges in their scarlet robes and huge white wigs on a hot July
Sunday attending service in Norminster Cathedral.
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