Weighed and Wanting | Page 2

happy in any--even in such
circumstances and worse, but they are rare, and not a little better worth
knowing than the common class of mortals--alas that they will be
common! content to be common they are not and cannot be. Among

these exceptional mortals I do not count such as, having secured the
corner of a couch within the radius of a good fire, forget the world
around them by help of the magic lantern of a novel that interests them:
such may not be in the least worth knowing for their disposition or
moral attainment--not even although the noise of the waves on the
sands, or the storm in the chimney, or the rain on the windows but
serves to deepen the calm of their spirits. Take the novel away, give the
fire a black heart; let the smells born in a lodging-house kitchen invade
the sitting-room, and the person, man or woman, who can then, on such
a day, be patient with a patience pleasant to other people, is, I repeat,
one worth knowing--and such there are, though not many. Mrs.
Raymount, half the head and more than half the heart of a certain
family in a certain lodging house in the forefront of Burcliff, was one
of such.
It was not a large family, yet contained perhaps as many varieties of
character and temper as some larger ones, with as many several ways of
fronting such a misfortune--for that is what poor creatures, the slaves of
the elements, count it--as rainy weather in a season concerning which
all men agree that it ought to be fine, and that something is out of order,
giving ground of complaint, if it be not fine. The father met it with
tolerably good humor; but he was so busy writing a paper for one of the
monthly reviews, that he would have kept the house had the day been
as fine as both the church going visitors, and the mammon-worshipping
residents with income depending on the reputation of their weather,
would have made it if they could, nor once said _by your leave_;
therefore he had no credit, and his temper must pass as not proven. But
if you had taken from the mother her piece of work--she was busy
embroidering a lady's pinafore in a design for which she had taken
colors and arrangement from a peacock's feather, but was disposing
them in the form of a sun which with its rays covered the stomacher,
the deeper tints making the shadow between the golden arrows--had
you taken from her this piece of work, I say, and given her nothing to
do instead, she would yet have looked and been as peaceful as she now
looked, for she was not like Doctor Doddridge's dog that did not know
who made him.
A longish lad stood in the bow window, leaning his head on the shutter,
in a mood of smouldering rebellion against the order of things. He was

such a mere creature of moods, that individual judgments of his
character might well have proved irreconcilable. He had not yet begun
by the use of his will--constantly indeed mistaking impulse for will--to
blend the conflicting elements of his nature into one. He was therefore
a man much as the mass of flour and raisins, etc., when first put into the
bag, is a plum-pudding; and had to pass through something analogous
to boiling to give him a chance of becoming worthy of the name he
would have arrogated. But in his own estimate of himself he claimed
always the virtues of whose presence he was conscious in his good
moods letting the bad ones slide, nor taking any account of what was in
them. He substituted forgetfulness for repudiation, a return of good
humor for repentance, and at best a joke for apology.
Mark, a pale, handsome boy of ten, and Josephine, a rosy girl of seven,
sat on the opposite side of the fire, amusing themselves with a puzzle.
The gusts of wind, and the great splashes of rain on the glass, only
made them feel the cosier and more satisfied.
"Beastly weather!" remarked Cornelius, as with an effort half wriggle,
half spring, he raised himself perpendicular, and turned towards the
room rather than the persons in it.
"I'm sorry you don't like it, Cornie," said his elder sister, who sat beside
her mother trimming what promised to be a pretty bonnet. A
concentrated effort to draw her needle through an accumulation of
silken folds seemed to take something off the bloom of the smile with
which she spoke.
"Oh, it's all very well for girls!" returned Cornelius. "You don't do
anything worth doing; and besides you've got so many things you like
doing, and so much time to do them in, that