I remember
being amused at your disappointment and her indignation when I said I
didn't see why a man was bound to be a doctor because his father was
before him; and I suppose if Bobus or I had taken to it, this Ruthven
need not have been beforehand with us!"
"It would have been transgressing the conditions to hold it out to
you."
"I don't imagine I could have done it any way," said Allen, sighing.
"I never can enter into the taste the others have for that style of
thing; but Bobus might have succeeded. You must have expected it of
him, at the time when he and I used to laugh at what we thought was a
monomania on your part for our taking up medical science as a tribute
to our
father, when we did not need it as a provision."
"You see, if any of you had taken up the study from pure philan-
thropy, as some people do—-well, at any rate in George Macdonald's
novels-—it would have been the very qualification. But I had little
hope from the time that the fortune came. I dreamt the first night
that Midas had turned the whole of you to gold statues, and that I
was wandering about like the Princess Paribanou to find the Magnum
Bonum to disenchant you."
"It has come pretty true," said Allen thoughtfully, "that inheritance
did us all a great deal of mischief.
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