"Well, well,--I only want you to look on all sides of what you are about to do, and to count the cost beforehand." Everett smiled quietly. As if "the cost" were not already counted, felt, and suffered in that deep heart of his! But he said nothing. "In the next place, what do you propose to do?" pursued his brother. "Will you enter a profession? Can't say you're much adapted for a lawyer; and perhaps you're too tender-hearted for a doctor, either. But I remember, as a boy, you always said you should like to be a clergyman. And, by Jove! when one comes to think of it, you've a good deal of the cut of the village priest about you. What do you say to that?" "Nothing. I have other plans." And Everett proceeded briefly to tell him these. He had heard from Charles Barclay, now high in the confidence of one of the leading mercantile firms of Montreal; and through him, he had obtained the offer of an appointment in the same house. Richard Gray listened to all this, with ill-concealed amusement twitching the corners of his mouth. He thought the idea of his brother's turning man-of-business one of the "richest" he had ever heard. "With your hard head and shrewd notions, I should say you were likely to make a sensation in the mercantile world," he observed. "It's a hopeful scheme, altogether. Oh, hang it!" proceeding from sarcasm to remonstrance, "that'll never do, Everett! You'll be getting into some precious scrape or other. You're not the fellow for a merchant's office, trust me. Now something in the way of a government appointment is much more like it. A pleasant, poetical sort of sinecure,--there are lots of them to be had. You just trundle down for an hour or two every day, write letters, or poems, or whatever you like, with the official stationery, and receive your salary quarterly. You _can't_ do any mischief in a place like that. Now that's the sort of thing for you,--if one could get hold of some of those fellows in power. Why!" brightening with the sudden dash of an idea, "there are the Beauchamps themselves! They've a legion of influential relatives. Couldn't they get you into a snug berth? Oh, the Devil!"--for Everett's look was not to be mistaken,--"if you bring your high-flown ideas of dignity and independence into this plain, practical question of subsistence, it's all up with you. Do you mean to tell me that you seriously think of this Canada scheme?" Everett assented. "Have you informed Lady Beauchamp of your intention of becoming a merchant's clerk? I should like to see her face when you tell her; she's such a shrewd old soul; and when a woman _does_ take to the sharp and worldly style of thing, it's the very deuse! Expect no indulgence in that quarter." "I don't ask it. Rosa, of course, cannot become my wife till I am able to give her a worthy home. Her mother will not wish to cancel our engagement in the mean time."