brooding, embittered.

"If I had only had a son to have been proud of!" he muttered. "It's
of no use; he wouldn't go. It isn't in him to take an education."

"No," said the mother, comforting him resignedly, after a pause in
which she seemed to be surveying the boy's whole life; "it's of no
use; there never was much in David."

"Then he shall work!" cried the father, striking his knee with
clenched fist. "I'll see that he is kept at work."

Just then the lad came round from behind the house, walking
rapidly. Since dinner he had been off somewhere, alone, having it
out with himself, perhaps shrinking, most of all, from this first
exposure to his parents. Such an ordeal is it for us to reveal what
we really are to those who have known us longest and have never
discovered us.

He walked quickly around and stood before them, pallid and shaking
from head to foot.

"Father!"--

There was filial dutifulness in the voice, but what they had never
heard from those lips--authority.

"I am going to the university, to the Bible College. It will be
hard for you to spare me, I know, and I don't expect to go at once.
But I shall begin my preparations, and as soon as it is possible I