I've got a
good pile of money together, now. At first it didn't come easy; but now
it's got started it pours in and pours in; it seems like there was no end
to it. I've got well on to three million; but it couldn't keep me from
losin' my son. It can't buy me back a minute of his life; not all the
money in the world can do it!"
He grieved this out as if to himself rather than to Beaton, who, scarcely
ventured to say, "I know--I am very sorry--"
"How did you come," Dryfoos interrupted, "to take up paintin'?"
"Well, I don't know," said Beaton, a little scornfully. "You don't take
a thing of that kind up, I fancy. I always wanted to paint."
"Father try to stop you?"
"No. It wouldn't have been of any use. Why--"
"My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did stop him or I thought I
did. But I reckon he was a preacher, all the same, every minute of his
life. As you say, it ain't any use to try to stop a thing like that. I
reckon if a child has got any particular bent, it was given to it; and
it's goin' against the grain, it's goin' against the law, to try to bend
it some other way. There's lots of good business men, Mr. Beaton, twenty
of 'em to every good preacher?"
"I imagine more than twenty," said Beaton, amused and touched through his
curiosity as to what the old man was driving at by the quaint simplicity
of his speculations.
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