Weighed and Wanting | Page 9

fine

evening."
She went to put on her hat and cloak, and presently they were in the
street.
It was one of those misty clearings in which sometimes the day seems
to gather up his careless skirts, that have been sweeping the patient,
half-drowned world, as he draws nigh the threshold of the waiting night.
There was a great lump of orange color half melted up in the watery
clouds of the west, but all was dreary and scarce consolable, up to the
clear spaces above, stung with the steely stars that began to peep out of
the blue hope of heaven. Thither Hester kept casting up her eyes as they
walked, or rather somehow her eyes kept travelling thitherward of
themselves, as if indeed they had to do with things up there. And the
child that cries for the moon is wiser than the man who looks upon the
heavens as a mere accident of the earth, with which none but
unpractical men concern themselves.
But as she walked gazing at "an azure disc, shield of tranquility," over
her head, she set her foot down unevenly, and gave her ankle a wrench.
She could not help uttering a little cry.
"There now, Hester!" said Cornelius, pulling her up like a horse that
stumbled, "that's what you get by your star-gazing! You are always
coming to grief by looking higher than your head!"
"Oh, please, stop a minute, Corney," returned Hester, for the fellow
would have walked on as if nothing had happened. "My ankle hurts
so!"
"I didn't know it was so bad as that!" he answered stopping. "There!
take my arm."
"Now I can go on again," she said, after a few moments of silent
endurance. "How stupid of me!--on a plain asphalt pavement!"
He might have excused her with the remark that just on such was an
accidental inequality the more dangerous.
"What bright, particular star were you worshipping now?" he asked
scoffingly.
"What do you mean by that?" she rejoined in a tone affected by her
suffering, which thence, from his lack of sympathy, he took for one of
crossness.
"You know quite well," he answered roughly, "that you are always
worshipping some paragon or other--for a while, till you get tired of her,

and then throw her away for another!"
Hester was hurt and made no answer.
There was some apparent ground for the accusation. She was ready to
think extravagantly of any new acquaintances that pleased her. Frank
and true and generous, it was but natural she should read others by
herself; just as those in whom is meanness or guile cannot help
attributing the same to the simplest. Nor was the result unnatural either,
namely, that, when a brief intercourse had sufficed to reveal a nature on
the common level, it sufficed also to chill the feeling that had rushed to
the surface to welcome a friend, and send the new-found floating far
away on the swift ebb of disappointment. Any whom she treats thus,
called her, of course, fitful and changeable, whereas it was in truth the
unchangeableness of her ideal and her faithfulness to it that exposed her
to blame. She was so true, so much in earnest, and, although gentle, had
so little softness to drape the sterner outlines of her character that she
was looked upon with dislike by not a few of her acquaintance.
"That again comes of looking too high, and judging with precipitation,"
resumed Cornelius, urged from within to be unpleasant--and the rather
that she did not reply.
He was always ready to criticise, and it was so much the easier for him
that he had not the least bent towards self-criticism. For the latter
supposes some degree of truth in the inward parts, and that is
obstructive to the indulgence of the former tendency. As to himself, he
would be hand and glove at a moment's notice with any man who
looked a gentleman, and made himself agreeable; nor whatever he
might find him to be, was he, so long as the man was not looked down
upon by others, the least inclined to avoid his company because of
moral shadiness. "A man can take care of himself!" he would say.
Hester stopped again.
"Corney," she said, "my ankle feels so weak! I am walking in terror of
twisting it again. You must let me stand a bit. I shall be all right in a
minute."
"I'm very sorry," rejoined her brother disagreeably. "We must take the
first fly we meet, and go home again. It's just my luck! I thought we
were going to have some fun!"
They stood silent, she looking nowhere, and he staring now in this
direction, now in that. "Hullo! what's this?" he cried, his gaze fixing on

a large building opposite. "The