CHAPTER II . A LETTER OF DESTINY Eric , finding that his father had not yet returned from the college , went into the library and sat down to read a letter he had picked up from the hall table . It was from Larry West , and after the first few lines Eric 's face lost the absent look it had worn and assumed an expression of interest . `` I am writing to ask a favour of you , Marshall , '' wrote West . `` The fact is , I 've fallen into the hands of the Philistines -- that is to say , the doctors . I 've not been feeling very fit all winter but I 've held on , hoping to finish out the year . `` Last week my landlady -- who is a saint in spectacles and calico -- looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said , VERY gently , ` You must go to town to-morrow , Master , and see a doctor about yourself . ' `` I went and did not stand upon the order of my going . Mrs. Williamson is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed . She has an inconvenient habit of making you realize that she is exactly right , and that you would be all kinds of a fool if you did n't take her advice . You feel that what she thinks to-day you will think to-morrow . `` In Charlottetown I consulted a doctor . He punched and pounded me , and poked things at me and listened at the other end of them ; and finally he said I must stop work ` immejutly and to onct ' and hie me straightway to a climate not afflicted with the north-east winds of Prince Edward Island in the spring . I am not to be allowed to do any work until the fall . Such was his dictum and Mrs. Williamson enforces it . `` I shall teach this week out and then the spring vacation of three weeks begins . I want you to come over and take my place as pedagogue in the Lindsay school for the last week in May and the month of June . The school year ends then and there will be plenty of teachers looking for the place , but just now I can not get a suitable substitute . I have a couple of pupils who are preparing to try the Queen 's Academy entrance examinations , and I do n't like to leave them in the lurch or hand them over to the tender mercies of some third-class teacher who knows little Latin and less Greek . Come over and take the school till the end of the term , you petted son of luxury .
It will do you a world XXXXX good to learn how rich a man feels when he is earning twenty-five dollars a month by his own unaided efforts !
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