Judith made herself as fresh and pretty as girls love to be, pondering the while John’s choice of work in life. She would choose for him to be like Roger, and do Roger’s work, but if he did not believe himself to be “called” like Roger, that would not be acceptable work; was not healing a part of Christ’s work; was not John gentle, sympathetic, and in love with every human creature? He had a copy of something of Drummond’s in his pocket; he said Drummond was making a man of him. The beginning of his manhood was in joining a Boy’s Brigade while he was away at boarding school up the Hudson. When she came back to the piazza he said he would read to her Drummond’s address to a Boy’s Brigade. He had grown more grave since he went away; he told her the weight of what to do and what not to do was heavy upon him night and day. “And he has such laughing brown eyes,” she said, almost aloud, to the girl in blue muslin, reflected in the cracked mirror. “What are _you_ going to do?” he inquired as he pushed a piazza chair near the hammock for her, and stretched himself in the hammock that he might look up at her and watch her as he talked. “Must I do something?” “You are old enough to decide. Girls are always deciding. Martha and Lou are forever taking up something new. They are not satisfied to be housekeepers. How Marion has settled down since she came to Bensalem! To be Roger’s housekeeper and a deaconess in his church has come to be her only ambition. Is that yours, too?” “Which?” she asked with serious lips and dancing eyes. “Both.” “My Cousin Don thinks he has my future in his right hand. But I’m afraid his right hand is finding business he likes better.” “Tell me true, what do you wish most to do?” “If you cannot decide for yourself, how can you expect me to decide for myself?” “I do know. I have decided. I am simply waiting for Roger’s judgment to confirm my choice. I want him to talk father over. Father wants one of his sons in the business, and Maurice declares he will not go in—he wants to be an architect. He has decided talent; as I have not, but am only commonplace and a drudgery sort of a fellow; I may take business instead of medicine to please father and help Maurice out. Mother beseeches me to please father; she almost put it ‘obey’ my father. What do _you_ advise me?” “O, John, is it like that? I thought there was nothing in the way but your own choice.” “There is not. Father will give a grudging consent. I think he gave me my California trip to give me time to think—perhaps to think of his wishes. He went into the business to please his father.” “He has not regretted it.” “Far from it. He congratulates himself. I know a fellow whose father gave him a ‘thrashing’ to make him go to college; his grandfather had given his father a ‘thrashing’ and made him go.” “Did he go?” “The fellow I know? No; he ran away.” “Do you want to run away?” “I ran away to Bensalem to ask Roger.”