Weighed and Wanting

㎬Weighed and Wanting

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Weighed and Wanting, by George MacDonald #38 in our series by George MacDonald
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Title: Weighed and Wanting
Author: George MacDonald
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9096] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 5, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEIGHED AND WANTING ***

Produced by David Garcia, Jonathan Ingram and Distributed Proofreaders

[Illustration: Hester at her piano.]

WEIGHED AND WANTING
BY GEORGE MACDONALD

CONTENTS.
I. Bad Weather
II. Father, Mother and Son
III. The Magic Lantern
IV. Hester alone
V. Truly the Light is sweet
VI. The Aquarium
VII. Amy Amber
VIII. Cornelius and Vavasor
IX. Songs and Singers
X. Hester and Amy
XI. At Home
XII. A Beginning
XIII. A private Exhibition
XIV. Vavasor and Hester
XV. A small Failure
XVI. The Concert Room
XVII. An uninvited Guest
XVIII. Catastrophe
XIX. Light and Shade
XX. The Journey
XXI. Mother and Daughter
XXII. Gladness
XXIII. Down the Hill
XXIV. Out of the Frying pan
XXV. Was it into the Fire?
XXVI. Waiting a Purpose
XXVII. Major H. G. Marvel
XXVIII. The Major and Vavasor
XXIX. A brave Act
XXX. In another Light
XXXI. The Major and Cousin Helen's Boys
XXXII. A distinguished Guest
XXXIII. Courtship in earnest
XXXIV. Calamity
XXXV. In London
XXXVI. A Talk with the Major
XXXVII. Rencontres
XXXVIII. In the House
XXXIX. The Major and the Small-pox
XL. Down and down
XLI. Difference
XLII. Deep calleth unto Deep
XLIII. Deliverance
XLIV. On the Way up
XLV. More yet
XLVI. Amy and Corney
XLVII. Miss Vavasor
XLVIII. Mr. Christopher
XLIX. An Arrangement
L. Things at Home
LI. The Return
LII. A heavenly Vision
LIII. A sad Beginning
LIV. Mother and Son
LV. Miss Dasomma and Amy
LVI. The sick Room
LVII. Vengeance is Mine
LVIII. Father and Daughter-in-law
LIX. The Message
LX. A birthday Gift

CHAPTER I
.
BAD WEATHER.
It was a gray, windy noon in the beginning of autumn. The sky and the sea were almost of the same color, and that not a beautiful one. The edge of the horizon where they met was an edge no more, but a bar thick and blurred, across which from the unseen came troops of waves that broke into white crests, the flying manes of speed, as they rushed at, rather than ran towards the shore: in their eagerness came out once more the old enmity between moist and dry. The trees and the smoke were greatly troubled, the former because they would fain stand still, the latter because it would fain ascend, while the wind kept tossing the former and beating down the latter. Not one of the hundreds of fishing boats belonging to the coast was to be seen; not a sail even was visible; not the smoke of a solitary steamer ploughing its own miserable path through the rain-fog to London or Aberdeen. It was sad weather and depressing to not a few of the thousands come to Burcliff to enjoy a holiday which, whether of days or of weeks, had looked short to the labor weary when first they came, and was growing shorter and shorter, while the days that composed it grew longer and longer by the frightful vitality of dreariness. Especially to those of them who hated work, a day like this, wrapping them in a blanket of fog, whence the water was every now and then squeezed down upon them in the wettest of all rains, seemed a huge bite snatched by that vague enemy against whom the grumbling of the world is continually directed out of the cake that by every right and reason belonged to them. For were they not born to be happy, and how was human being to fulfill his destiny in such circumstances?
There are men and women who can be 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