What shall I do? Must I take
to carving them out of my heart?'
'I thought you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack,'
Edwin Drood returns, astonished, bending forward in his chair to
lay a sympathetic hand on Jasper's knee, and looking at him with an
anxious face.
'I know you thought so. They all think so.'
'Well, I suppose they do,' says Edwin, meditating aloud. 'Pussy
thinks so.'
'When did she tell you that?'
'The last time I was here. You remember when. Three months ago.'
'How did she phrase it?'
'O, she only said that she had become your pupil, and that you were
made for your vocation.'
The younger man glances at the portrait. The elder sees it in him.
'Anyhow, my dear Ned,' Jasper resumes, as he shakes his head with a
grave cheerfulness, 'I must subdue myself to my vocation: which is
much the same thing outwardly. It's too late to find another now.
This is a confidence between us.'
'It shall be sacredly preserved, Jack.'
'I have reposed it in you, because--'
'I feel it, I assure you. Because we are fast friends, and because
you love and trust me, as I love and trust you. Both hands, Jack.'
As each stands looking into the other's eyes, and as the uncle
holds the nephew's hands, the uncle thus proceeds:
'You know now, don't you, that even a poor monotonous chorister and
grinder of music--in his niche--may be troubled with some stray
sort of ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what
shall we call it?'
'Yes, dear Jack.
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