Weighed and Wanting | Page 4

no more to him now: she knew that the
shower bath is not the readiest mode of making a child friendly with
cold water.
Just then broke out the sun. The wind had at last blown a hole in the
clouds, and through that at once, as is his wont, and the wont of a
greater light than the sun, he shone.
"Come! there's something almost like sunshine!" said Cornelius, having
for a few moments watched the light on the sands. "Before it goes in
again, as it's sure to do in five minutes at the farthest, get on your
bonnet, Hester, and let's have an attempt at a walk."
Before Hester could answer came a sudden spatter of rain on the
window.
"There! I told you so! That's always the way! Just my luck! For me to
set my heart on a thing is all one with being disappointed of it."
"But if the thing was not worth setting your heart on?" said Hester,
speaking with forced gentleness.

"What does that signify? The thing is that your heart is set on it. What
you think nothing other people may yet be bold enough to take for
something."
"Well, at least, if I had to be disappointed, I should like it to be in
something that would be worth having."
"Would you now?" returned Cornelius spitefully. "I hope you may have
what you want. For my part I don't desire to be better than my neighbor.
I think it downright selfish."
"Do you want to be as good as your neighbor, Cornie?" said his mother,
looking up through a film of tears. "But there is a more important
question than that," she went on, having waited a moment in vain for an
answer, "and that is, whether you are content with being as good as
yourself, or want to be better."
"To tell you the truth, mother, I don't trouble my head about such things.
Philosophers are agreed that self consciousness is the bane of the
present age: I mean to avoid it. If you had let me go into the army, I
might have had some leisure for what you call thought, but that horrible
bank takes everything out of a fellow. The only thing it leaves is a
burning desire to forget it at any cost till the time comes when you must
endure it again. If I hadn't some amusement in between, I should cut
my throat, or take to opium or brandy. I wonder how the governor
would like to be in my place!"
Hester rose and left the room, indignant with him for speaking so of his
father.
"If your father were in your place, Cornelius," said his mother with
dignity, "he would perform the duties of it without grumbling, however
irksome they might be."
"How do you know that, mother? He was never tried."
"I know it because I know him," she answered.
Cornelius gave a grunt.
"If you think it hard," his mother resumed, "that you have to follow a
way of life not of your own choosing, you must remember that you
never could be got to express a preference for one way over another,
and that your father had to strain every nerve to send you to college--to
the disadvantage, for a time at least, of others of the family. I am sorry
to have to remind you also that you did not make it any easier for him
by your mode of living while there."

"I didn't run up a single bill!" cried Cornelius with indignation; "and
my father knows it!"
"He does; but he knows also that your cousin Robert did not spend
above two-thirds of what you did, and made more of his time too."
"He was in rather a different set," sneered the youth.
"And you know," his mother went on, "that his main design in placing
you in your uncle's bank was that you might gain such a knowledge of
business as will be necessary to the proper management of the money
he will leave behind him. When you have gained that knowledge, there
will be time to look farther, for you are young yet."
Now his father's money was the continuous occasion of annoyance to
Cornelius, for it was no secret from his family how he meant to dispose
of it. He intended, namely, to leave it under trustees, of whom he
wished his son to be one until he married, when it was to be divided
equally among his children.
This arrangement was not agreeable to Cornelius, who could not see, he
said, what advantage in that case he had from being the eldest of the
family.
He broke out in a tone of expostulation, ready to swell into indignant
complaint.
"Now, mother," he said "do