"She was my teacher, of course she encouraged me. I am prepared for Faversham. I--" "Faversham?" Mrs. Lister's tone was as nearly scornful as she could make it. It was as though she alluded to a mountebank. "I have often told you about him, mother. He is the greatest teacher in New York and he is Miss Thomasina's old friend. She has prepared me for him as though she were a pupil teacher." "What is a pupil teacher?" asked Mrs. Lister in the same tone. "He is the pupil of a great master who prepares younger pupils according to the master's methods. Miss Thomasina is the most wonderful person I know." After that sentence there was a pause, which grew longer and longer. "Your mother would like you to be a preacher or a teacher like your father and grandfather," said Dr. Lister at last. "Or, perhaps a lawyer or doctor." "I could not be a doctor. I hate the sight of Dr. Green's office with all the bottles and knives. And a lawyer--I think a lawyer's business is hideous. They make people pay to get what is theirs by right, and they help to cheat the poor. They defend murderers when they know they are murderers and try to hang innocent men. I'm not interested in sick bodies or in crimes. I'm willing to be a teacher, but it must be a teacher of music." "To take children to teach, like Thomasina, for pay?" "Why, certainly, for pay! A musician must live like any one else. I wouldn't want to take absolute babies or too many stupid children, but I'd be perfectly willing to begin that way." "You would cover me with shame!" "Mother!" Dr. Lister tapped the arms of his chair nervously. Above all things in the world he disliked acrimonious discussion between members of the same family. Mrs. Lister was hard on the boy. Besides, she was becoming a little ridiculous. He was apt to put off disagreeable duties in the hope that they would not have to be performed or that they might cease to be disagreeable. "We needn't decide it all at this moment." "It is decided," said Mrs. Lister. "Mr. Utterly thought he played very well. I suppose he has had opportunity to judge." "I consider Mr. Utterly a poor judge of anything," Mrs. Lister went on vehemently. It seemed to her agonized eyes that Richard looked like Basil. Basil never argued, but he took his own way. "I cannot have it," said she. "I will not have it. You are my child. I brought you into the world. I have some rights in you. If you persist--" Mrs. Lister stopped, terrified, at a bitter reminiscence suggested by her tone and her words. She put up her hand to hide her eyes. Richard was frightened. It could not be that they would seriously oppose him, that he could not persuade them! It could not be that he would have to work his own way. It could not be that he must hurt and defy his mother! He thought of Eleanor Bent, successful, honored, sought out, lost to him.