He scribbled his pencil across the lines he had attempted to draw, and started to tear the paper in disgust, when she caught it from him.
"I know just what you mean," she cried. "And Phil Tremont, you _are_ a genius. This will be the best design in the whole lot." She was outlining it quickly as she spoke. "You ought to be a designer. You'd make your fortune at it, for originality is what counts. Why don't you study it?"
"I did have it in mind for a week or so," answered Phil, "but I wanted most of all to be an architect, or something of the sort. Father wanted me to study medicine, and grandfather thought I'd do better at civil engineering. But I couldn't settle down to anything. I suppose the truth of the matter was I was thinking too much about the good times I was having, and didn't want to buckle down to anything that meant hard digging. So last year father said I wasn't getting any kind of discipline, and that I had to go to a military school for it. That there I would at least learn punctuality and order, and that military training would fit me to be a good citizen just as much as to be a good soldier."
"What does he think about it now?" answered Joyce. "I beg your pardon," she added, hastily. "I had no right to ask such a personal question."
"That's all right," answered Phil. "I don't care a rap if you do talk about it. It's worried me a good deal thinking how cut up the old pater will feel when he finds out about it. He thought he'd left me in such good hands, shut up where I couldn't get out into any trouble, and I hated to write that they'd fired me almost as soon as his back was turned. If I could have talked to him, and explained both sides of it, how unfair the Major was, and all that, and how we were just out for a lark, with the best intentions in the world, I could have soon convinced him that I meant all right, and he wouldn't have minded so much. But I never was any good at letter-writing, so I kept putting it off the first two weeks I was here. I wrote last week, but it takes a month to send a letter and get an answer, so it'll be some time yet before I hear from him. In the meantime, I'm taking life easy, and worrying as little as possible."
Joyce made no reply when he paused, only bent her head a little lower over her work; but Phil, unusually sensitive to mental influences, felt her disapprobation as keenly as if she had spoken. The silence began to grow uncomfortable, and finally he asked, lightly, toying with a paper-knife while he spoke, "Well, what do you think of the situation?"