Randy stuck his hands in his pockets with an air of sudden resolution.
"Look here," he said, "why can't we go halves in this car business? It
will pay our expenses, and we can finish our law course at the
University."
"Law? Oh, look here, Randy, I thought you had given that up."
"I haven't, and why should you? We will finish, and some day we will
open an office together."
The Major, whistling softly, listened and said nothing.
"I have been thinking a lot about it," Randy went on, "and I can't see
much of a future ahead of me. Not the kind of future that our families
are expecting of us. You and I have got to stand for something, Truxton,
or some day the world will be saying that all the great men died with
Thomas Jefferson."
The Major went on with his lilting tune. What a pair they were, these
lads! Randy, afire with his dreams, and rather tragic in his dreaming.
Truxton, light as a feather--laughing.
"Why can't we give to the world as much as the men who have gone before
us?" Randy was demanding. "Are we going to take everything from our
ancestors, and give nothing to our descendants?"
Truxton chuckled. "By Jove," he said, "now that I come to think of it, I
am the head of a family--there's Fiddle-dee-dee, and I shall have to
reckon with Fiddle-dee-dee's children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren--who will expect that my portrait will hang on the
wall at Huntersfield."
"It is all very well to laugh," said Randy hotly, "but that is the way
it looks to me; that we have got to show to the world that our ambitions
are--big. It is all very well to talk about the day's work. I am going
to do it, and pay my way, but there's got to be something beyond that to
think about--something bigger than I have ever known."
He gained dignity through the sincerity of his purpose. The Major, still
whistling softly, wondered what had come over the boy. He recognized a
difference since he had last talked to him. Randy was not only roused;
he was ready to look life in the face, to wrest from it the best. "If
that is what love of the little girl is doing for him," said the Major
to himself, "then let him love her."
Truxton continued to treat the situation lightly. "Look here," he said,
"do you think you are going to be the only great man in our generation?"
Randy laughed; but the fire was still in his eyes. "The county will hold
the two of us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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