Weighed and Wanting | Page 3

it's all one to you whether
you go out or stay at home. But when a fellow has but a miserable three
weeks and then back to a rot of work he cares no more for than a felon
for the treadmill, then it is rather hard to have such a hole made in it!
Day after day, as sure as the sun rises--if he does rise--of weather as
abominable as rain and wind can make it!"
"My dear boy!" said his mother without looking up.
"Oh, yes, mother! I know! You're so good you would have had Job
himself take it coolly. But I'm not like you. Only you needn't think me
so very--what you call it! It's only a breach in the laws of nature I'm
grumbling at. I don't mean anything to offend you."

"Perhaps you mean more than you think," answered his mother with a
deep-drawn breath, which, if not a sigh, was very nearly one. "I should
be far more miserable than any weather could make me, not to be able
to join in the song of the three holy children."
"I've heard you say that before, mother," said the youth, in a tone that
roused his sister's anger; for much that the mother let pass was by the
daughter for her sake resented. "But you see," he went on, "the three
holy children, as you call them, hadn't much weather of any sort where
they sung their song. Precious tired one gets of it before the choir's
through with it!"
"They would have been glad enough of some of the weather you call
beastly," said Hester, again pulling through a stiff needle, this time
without any smile, for sometimes that brother was more than she could
bear.
"Oh, I dare say! But then, you see, they knew, when they got out, they
wouldn't have to go back to a beastly bank, where notes and gold all
day went flying about like bats--nothing but the sight and the figures of
it coming their way!"
The mother's face grew very sad as it bent over her work. The youth
saw her trouble.
"Mother, don't be vexed with a fellow," he said more gently. "I wasn't
made good like you."
"I think you were right about the holy children," she said quietly.
"What!" exclaimed Cornelius. "Mother, I never once before heard you
say I was right about any mortal thing! Come, this is pleasant! I begin
to think strong ale of myself! I don't understand it, though."
"Shall I tell you? Would you care to know what I mean?"
"Oh, yes, mother! if you want to tell me."
"I think you were right when you implied it was the furnace that made
them sing about the world outside of it: one can fancy the idea of the
frost and the snow and the ice being particularly pleasant to them. And
I am afraid, Cornelius, my dear son, you need the furnace to teach you
that the will of God, even in weather, is a thing for rejoicing in, not for
abusing. But I dread the fire for your sake, my boy!"
"I should have thought this weather and the bank behind it furnace
enough, mother!" he answered, trying to laugh off her words.
"It does not seem to be," she said, with some displeasure. "But then,"

she added with a sigh, "you have not the same companion that the three
holy children had."
"Who was that?" rejoined Cornelius, for he had partly forgotten the
story he knew well enough in childhood.
"We will not talk about him now," answered his mother. "He has been
knocking at your chamber-door for some time: when he comes to the
furnace-door, perhaps you will open that to him."
Cornelius returned no answer; he felt his mother's seriousness awkward,
and said to himself she was unkind; why couldn't she make some
allowance for a fellow? He meant no harm!
He was still less patient with his mother's not very frequent
admonitions, since going into the bank, for, much as he disliked it, he
considered himself quite a man of the world in consequence. But he
was almost as little capable of slipping like a pebble among other
pebbles, the peculiar faculty of the man of the world, as he was of
perceiving the kind of thing his mother cared about--and that not from
moral lack alone, but from dullness and want of imagination as well.
He was like the child so sure he can run alone that he snatches his hand
from his mother's and sets off through dirt and puddles, so to act the
part of the great personage he would consider himself.
With all her peace of soul, the heart of the mother was very anxious
about her son, but she said