Snowflakes and Sunbeams; Or, The Young Fur-traders: A Tale of the Far North. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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you know the disposition of your son better than I do; but even judging of it from what you have said, I'm quite sure that a sedentary life will ruin him."
"Ruin him! Humbug!" said Kennedy, who never failed to express his opinion at the shortest notice and in the plainest language—a fact so well known by his friends that they had got into the habit of taking no notice of it. "Humbug!" he repeated, "perfect humbug! You don't mean to tell me that the way to break him in is to let him run loose and wild whenever and wherever he pleases?"
"By no means. But you may rest assured that tying him down won't do it."
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Kennedy testily; "don't tell me. Have I not broken in young colts by the score? and don't I know that the way to fix their flints is to clap on a good strong curb?"
"If you had travelled farther south, friend," replied Mr. Grant, "you would have seen the Spaniards of Mexico break in their wild horses in a very different way; for after catching one with a lasso, a fellow gets on his back, and gives it the rein and the whip—ay, and the spur too; and before that race is over, there is no need for a curb."
"What!" exclaimed Kennedy, "and do you mean to argue from that, that I should let Charley run—and help him too? Send him off to the woods with gun and blanket, canoe and tent, all complete?" The old gentleman puffed a furious puff, and broke into a loud sarcastic laugh.
"No, no," interrupted Mr. Grant; "I don't exactly mean that, but I think that you might give him his way for a year or so. He's a fine, active, generous fellow; and after the novelty wore off, he would be in a much better frame of mind to listen to your proposals. Besides" (and Mr. Grant smiled expressively), "Charley is somewhat like his father. He has got a will of his own; and if you do not give him his way, I very much fear that he'll—"
"What?" inquired Mr. Kennedy abruptly.
"Take it," said Mr. Grant.
The puff that burst from Mr. Kennedy's lips on hearing this would have done credit to a thirty-six pounder.
"Take it!" said he; "he'd better not."
The latter part of this speech was not in itself of a nature calculated to convey much; but the tone of the old trader's voice, the contraction of his eyebrows, and above all the overwhelming flow of cloudlets that followed, imparted to it a significance that induced the belief that Charley's taking his own way would be productive of more terrific consequences than it was in the power of the most highly imaginative man to conceive.
"There's his sister Kate, now," continued the old gentleman; "she's as gentle and biddable as a lamb. I've only to say a word, and she's off like a shot to do my bidding; and she does it with such a sweet smile too." There was a touch of pathos in the old trader's voice as he said this. He was a man of strong feeling, and as impulsive in his tenderness as in his wrath. "But that rascal Charley," he continued, "is quite different. He's obstinate as a mule. To be sure, he has a good temper; and I must say for him he never goes into the sulks, which is a comfort, for of all things in the world sulking is the most childish and contemptible. He generally does what I bid him, too. But he's always getting into scrapes of one kind or other. And during the last week, notwithstanding all I can say to him, he won't admit that the best thing for him is to get a place in your counting-room, with the prospect of rapid promotion in the service. Very odd. I can't understand it at all;" and Mr. Kennedy heaved a deep sigh.
"Did you ever explain to him the prospects that he would have in the situation you propose for him?" inquired Mr. Grant.
"Can't say I ever did."
"Did you ever point out the probable end of a life spent in the woods?"
"No."
"Nor suggest to him that the appointment to the office here would only be temporary, and to see how he got on in it?"
"Certainly not."
"Then, my dear sir, I'm not surprised that Charley rebels. You have left him to suppose that, once placed at the desk here, he is a prisoner for life. But see, there he is," said Mr. Grant, pointing as he spoke towards the subject of their conversation, who was passing the window at the moment; "let me call him, and I feel certain that he will listen to reason in a few minutes."
"Humph!" ejaculated Mr. Kennedy, "you may try."
In another minute Charley had been summoned, and was seated, cap in hand, near the door.
"Charley, my boy," began Mr. Grant, standing with his back to the fire, his feet pretty wide apart, and his coat-tails under his arms—"Charley, my boy, your father has just been speaking of you. He is very anxious that you should enter the service of the Hudson's Bay Company; and as you are a clever boy and a good penman, we think that you would be likely to get on if placed for a year or so in our office here. I need scarcely point out to you, my boy, that in such a position you would be sure to obtain more rapid promotion than if you were placed in one of the distant outposts, where you would have very little to do, and perhaps little to eat, and no one to converse with except one or two men. Of course, we would merely place you here on trial, to see how you suited us; and if you prove steady and diligent, there is no saying how fast you might get on. Why, you might even come to fill my place in course of time. Come now, Charley, what think you of it?"
Charley's eyes had been cast on the ground while Mr. Grant was speaking. He now raised them, looked at his father, then at his interrogator, and said,—
"It is very kind of you both to be so anxious about my prospects. I thank you, indeed, very much; but I—a—"
"Don't like the desk?" said his father, in an angry tone. "Is that it, eh?"
Charley made no reply, but cast down his eyes again and smiled (Charley had a sweet smile, a peculiarly sweet, candid smile), as if he meant to say that his father had hit the nail quite on the top of the head that time, and no mistake.
"But consider," resumed Mr. Grant, "although you might probably be pleased with an outpost life at first, you would be sure to grow weary of it after the novelty wore off, and then you would wish with all your heart to be back here again. Believe me, child, a trader's life is a very hard and not often a very satisfactory one—"
"Ay," broke in the father, desirous, if possible, to help the argument, "and you'll find it a desperately wild, unsettled, roving sort of life, too, let me tell you! full of dangers both from wild beast and wild men—"
"Hush!" interrupted Mr. Grant, observing that the boy's eyes kindled when his father spoke of a wild, roving life, and wild beasts.—"Your father does not mean that life at an outpost is wild and interesting or exciting. He merely means that—a—it—"
Mr. Grant could not very well explain what it was that Mr. Kennedy meant if he did not mean that, so he turned to him for help.
"Exactly so," said that gentleman, taking a strong pull at the pipe for inspiration. "It's no ways interesting or exciting at all. It's slow, dull, and flat; a miserable sort of Robinson Crusoe life, with red Indians and starvation constantly staring you in the face—"
"Besides," said Mr. Grant, again interrupting the somewhat unfortunate efforts of his friend, who seemed to have a happy facility in sending a brilliant dash of romantic allusion across the dark side of his picture—"besides, you'll not have opportunity to amuse yourself, or to read, as you'll have no books, and you'll have to work hard with your hands oftentimes, like your men—"
"In fact," broke in the impatient father, resolved, apparently, to carry the point with a grand coup—"in fact, you'll have to rough it, as I did, when I went up the Mackenzie River district, where I was sent to establish a new post, and had to travel for weeks and weeks through a wild country, where none of us had ever been before; where we shot our own meat, caught our own fish, and built our own house—and were very near being murdered by the Indians; though, to be sure, afterwards they became the most civil fellows in the country, and brought us plenty of skins. Ay, lad, you'll repent of your obstinacy when you come to have to hunt your own dinner, as I've done many a day up the Saskatchewan, where I've had to fight with red-skins and grizzly bears and to chase the buffaloes over miles and miles of prairie on rough-going nags till my bones ached and I scarce knew whether I sat on—"
"Oh,"