The tone in which he asked this question made Rose choose her
words carefully.

"What are your plans, son? What do you want to be--not just now,
but finally?"

"I can't see what difference it makes what a fellow is--except
that in one business a man makes more than in another. And I
can't see either that it does a person a bit of good to have
money. I'm having more fun right now than father or you ever
had--more fun than anybody I know. Mother," and his face was
solemn as if with a great discovery, "I've figured it out that
it's silly to do as most people--just live to work. I'm going to
work just enough to live comfortably. Not one scrap more, either.
You can't think how I hate the very thought of it."

Rose sighed. Couldn't she, indeed! She understood only too well
how deeply this rebellion was rooted. The hours when he had been
dragged up from the far shores of a dreamful slumber to shiver
forth in the chill darkness to milk and chore, still rankled.
Those tangy frosty afternoons, when he had been forced to clean
barns and plow while the other boys went rabbit and possum
hunting or nutting, were afternoons whose loss he still mourned.
Nothing had yet atoned for the evenings when he had been torn
from his reading and sent sternly to bed because he must get up
so early. Always work had stolen from him these
treasures--dreams, recreation and knowledge. He had been obliged
to fight the farm and his father for even a modicum of them--the
things that made life worth living. And the irony of it--that