Trumps | Page 6

They no
more thought of little human weaknesses and mundane influences in
regard to her than they thought of cold vapor when they looked at
sunset clouds.
During the service Hope sat stately in the pew, with her eyes fixed
upon Dr. Peewee. She knew the boys were there. From time to time she
observed that new boys had arrived, and that older ones had left. But
how she discovered it, who could say? There was never one of Mr.
Gray's boys who could honestly declare that he had seen Hope Wayne
looking at either of the pews in which they sat. Perhaps she did not hear
what Dr. Peewee said, although she looked at him so steadily. Perhaps
her heart did not look out of her eyes, but was busy with a hundred
sweet fancies in which some one of those fascinated boys had a larger
share than he knew. Perhaps, when she covered her eyes in an attitude
of devotion, she did not thereby exclude all thoughts of the outer and
lower world. Perhaps the Being for whose worship they were
assembled was no more displeased with the innocent reveries and
fancies which floated through that young heart than with the soft air
and sweet song of birds that played through the open windows of the
church on some warm June Sunday morning.
But when the shrill-voiced leader of the choir sounded the key-note of
the hymn-tune through his nose, and the growling bass-viol joined in
unison, while the congregation rose, and Dr. Peewee surveyed his
people to mark who had staid away from service, then Hope Wayne
looked at the choir as if her whole soul were singing; and young
Gabriel Bennet, younger than Hope, had a choking feeling as he gazed
at her--an involuntary sense of unworthiness and shame before such
purity and grace. He counted every line of the hymn grudgingly, and
loved the tunes that went back and repeated and prolonged--the tunes

endlessly _da capo_--and the hymns that he heard as he looked at her
he never forgot.
But there were other eyes than Gabriel Bennet's that watched Hope
Wayne, and for many months had watched her--the flashing black eyes
of Abel Newt. Handsome, strong, graceful, he was one of the oldest
boys, and a leader at Mr. Gray's school. Like every handsome, bold boy
or young man, for he was fully eighteen, and seemed much older, Abel
Newt had plenty of allies at school--they could hardly be called friends.
There was many a boy who thought with the one nicknamed Little
Malacca, although, more prudently than he, he might not say it: "Abe
gives me gingerbread; but I guess I don't like him!" If a boy interfered
with Abe he was always punished. The laugh was turned on him; there
was ceaseless ridicule and taunting. Then if it grew insupportable, and
came to fighting, Abel Newt was strong in muscle and furious in wrath,
and the recusant was generally pommeled.
Reposing upon his easy, conscious superiority, Abel had long
worshiped Hope Wayne. They were nearly of the same age--she a few
months the younger. But as the regulations of the school confined every
boy, without especial permission of absence, to the school grounds, and
as Abel had no acquaintance with Mr. Burt and no excuse for calling,
his worship had been silent and distant. He was the more satisfied that
it should be so, because it had never occurred to him that any of the
other boys could be a serious rival for her regard. He was also obliged
to be the more satisfied with his silent devotion, because never, by a
glance, did she betray any consciousness of his particular observation,
or afford him the least opportunity for saying or doing any thing that
would betray it. If he hastened to the front door of the church he could
only stand upon the steps, and as she passed out she nodded to her few
friends, and immediately followed her grandfather into the carriage.
When Gabriel Bennet came to Mr. Gray's, Abel did not like him. He
laughed at him. He made the other boys laugh at him whenever he
could. He bullied him in the play-ground. He proposed to introduce
fagging at Mr. Gray's. He praised it as a splendid institution of the
British schools, simply because he wanted Gabriel as his fag. He

wanted to fling his boots at Gabriel's head that he might black them. He
wanted to send him down stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He wanted
to have Gabriel get up in the cold mornings and bring him his breakfast
in bed. He wanted to chain Gabriel to the car of his triumphal progress
through school-life. He wanted to debase and degrade him altogether.
"What is it," Abel