I found this the place to put in a little apology for Tabitha, who had persisted in treating Harry with marked distinction, although I had tried to remind her of the elder guest's claims to precedence by redoubling my attentions to him. "Oh, I'm used to it, I'm used to it," cried the Doctor, cutting short my apologies very good-humoredly. "Wherever we go, people treat him as if he had done them some great service, or was going to do them one. But I find my account in his good reception. I reap the practical advantages. And then I am something of a fool about Harry myself; so I can hardly blame the rest of the world. Think of his drawing me into complicity in that affair of the negro Orpheus! I made a pretence to myself that I wanted to see a foolish cave at Egerton, just to excuse my weakness in humoring his whims; but, in truth, by the time we were well on the road to Omocqua, I was feeling as if the welfare of the world depended on our getting that poor wretch safely housed there. Well, we shall see what will come of it! I remember, when Harry was a little boy, saying to him once, after seeing him bestow a great deal of labor in accomplishing a work not very important in older eyes, 'Well, Harry, now what have you done, after all?' 'I have done what I meant to do,' said the child. I am so used now to seeing Harry do what he means to do, that even in this case I can't help looking for some result,--though, probably, it will be one not so important in my view as in his, nor worth all that may be spent in arriving at it. I want to see him once fairly engaged in some steady career to which he will give himself heart and soul, as he does give himself to what he undertakes; then he'll have no time nor thought for these little extravagances." "Does Harry intend to take a profession?" "The law, I hope. He will study it in any case. This makes part of a plan he formed for himself years ago. He considers the study of law as a branch of the study of history, and a necessary preparation for the writing of history,--his dream at present. But when he once takes hold of the law, I hope he will stick to it." "Harry has very little the look of a student." "Yet he has already learned "'To scorn delights and live laborious days.' "But he has measure in everything,--and it is something to say of a boy of his ardent temper. He observes the balance between physical and mental exercise. He follows the counsel Languet gave to Sir Philip Sidney,--to 'take care of his health, and not be like one who, on a long journey, attends to himself, but not to the horse that is to carry him.'" "Do his parents wish him to follow the law?" my mother asked. "They wish whatever he does. It seems they hold their boy something sacred, and do not dare to interfere with him. But I wish it. The law is the threshold of public life. I want to see him in his place."