"I would rather do anything in the world than be a clerk and be stuck in an office all day. That is the worst of going to a public school, you get to hate the idea of an indoor life. I would rather a hundred times go to sea or enlist in the army, when I am old enough; at any rate in the army I should see something of the world and keep myself, and at the end of my five years' service might find some opening. Then there is my father's cousin out at the Cape. When he was here last year, I know he offered to take me out with him. Of course father would not hear of it then, there was no reason why he should; but things have changed, and I don't see why I should not go now. I am getting on for sixteen, you know, and can ride and all that sort of thing, and I shot regularly last winter, and brought down some partridges too." "Not many, master," the man said with a grin. "No, not many," the boy admitted; "still, it was my first year, and I had only a single barrel; father himself said I did very fairly, and that he had no doubt that I should make a good shot in time." "I have no doubt that you would, Master Yorke," the man said heartily. "You have learned to ride well, and a man with a good seat on a horse is generally good behind a gun." Yorke Harberton was, as he said, nearly sixteen, and was a typical public-school boy--straight and clean-limbed, free from all awkwardness, bright in expression, and possessed of a large amount of self-possession, or, as he himself would have called it, "cheek;" was a little particular about the set of his Eton jacket and trousers and the appearance of his boots; as hard as nails and almost tireless; a good specimen of the class by which Britain has been built up, her colonies formed, and her battle-fields won--a class in point of energy, fearlessness, the spirit of adventure, and a readiness to face and overcome all difficulties, unmatched in the world. His thoughts were turned into a fresh channel by his conversation with William, and he strolled away with his hands deep in his pockets and his mind busy. "Well, Yorke, what have you been doing with yourself?" was his father's first question when he returned. "I don't know that I have been doing anything, father." "Which does not mean that you have been in mischief, I hope?" "No," the boy laughed, "I haven't. I went to the stables first, and since then I have been walking about the garden." "That is quite a new amusement, Yorke, especially in winter," one of his sisters said in a tone of astonishment. "Fancy you walking round and round the garden! Wonders will never cease!" "Well, it is quite as sensible, anyhow, Lucy, as tearing about the grass playing lawn tennis on a hot summer's day." Like most boys of that age, Yorke, though very fond of his sisters, regarded them as mere girls, and especially objected to being in any way, as he considered, patronized by them.