CHAPTER SIX.
I DECIDE AND GO TO WORK.
I felt that I ought to write to my uncles and cousins, and I consulted Mrs Beeton about it.
Mrs Beeton put her head on one side and tried how far she could get her arm down the black worsted stocking she was darning, looking at me meditatively the while.
"Well, do you know," she said, "if I were you, my dear, I would write; for it do seem strange to leave you here, as I may say, all alone." "Then I will write," I said.

"I want to know what I am going to be." "Oh! I should be a soldier, like your dear pa was, if I were you," she said; "and I'd go into a regiment where they wore blue and silver-blue and silver always looks so well." "I don't want to be a soldier," I said rather sadly, for my fancy did at one time go strongly in that direction; but it did not seem so very long since the news came that my poor father had been killed in a skirmish with the Indians; and I remembered how my poor mother had thrown her arms round my neck and sobbed, and made me promise that I would never think of being a soldier.

And then it seemed as if after that news she had gradually drooped and faded, just as a flower might upon its stalk, till two years had gone by, and then all happened as I have related to you, and I was left pretty well alone in the world.
"I'm sorry you don't want to be a soldier," said Mrs Beeton, looking at me through her glasses, with her head a little more on one side.

"If I had been a young gentleman I should have been a horse-soldier.

I wouldn't be a sailor if I was you, sir." "Why not ?" I said.
"Because they do smell so of tar, and they're so rough and boisterous." "I think I shall be a gardener," I said.
"A what ?" "A gardener." "My dear boy!" she cried in horror, "whatever put that in your head?
Why, you couldn't be anything worse.