This was not the beginning of Hester’s enthusiasm for her kind—only a crystallizing shock it received. And though at the age of twenty-three she had little fruit to show yet, the tree would be nonetheless abundant in the end. She was one of the strong ones that grow slowly.

“There you are again, staring up into the sky again!” said Cornelius. “You’ll be spraining your other ankle any moment!”

“I had forgotten all about my ankle, Corney,” returned Hester quietly. “But I will be careful.”

“Well, I think between us we got the worth of our shilling! Did you ever see such a ridiculous old bloke?”

Hester did not reply, but heaved an inward sigh. What would be the use in trying to let her brother know how she felt inside so long as he recognized no dignity in life, never set himself to be! Why should anyone be taught to behave like a gentleman, so long as he is not a gentleman?

Cornelius burst out laughing.

“To think of that old codger trying to interpret the muffs going through the river, and the angels waiting for them on the bank like laundresses with their clean shirts! Ha, ha, ha!”

“The whole thing was pitiful,” said Hester. “That old man made me very sad.”

“How you could see anything pathetic, or ‘pitiful,’ as you call it, in that disreputable old humbug, I can’t even imagine,” replied her brother. “A more ludicrous specimen of broken-down humanity would be hard to find! A drunken old thief, I’ll lay you anything!”

“And you don’t count that pitiful, Cornelius? A man so low, so hopeless, yet you feel no pity for him?”

“Oh, don’t trouble your head about him. He’ll have his hot supper when he gets home, and his hot tumbler of whisky—swearing, too, if it’s late.”

“That seems to me the most pitiful of all,” returned Hester, and was on the point of adding, “That is just the kind of pity I feel for you, Corney,” but checked herself. “Is it not pitiful to see a human being, made in the image of God, sunk so low?”

“It’s his own doing,” returned Cornelius.

“And is not that the worst of it all? If he were not to blame, it would be sad enough. But to be as he is and to be to blame for it seems to me a misery unbearable.”

Cornelius again burst into laughter, and Hester held her peace. That her own brother’s one mode of relieving the suffering in the world should be to avoid as much as possible adding to his own was to her sisterly heart humiliating.

— Three —

Hester Alone

After the family separated for the night, Hester went to her room and fell to thinking again.

She was one of those women who, from the first dawn of consciousness, have all their lives tried, with varying degrees of success, to do the right thing. In this she followed in the footsteps of her mother, who also walked steadily along the true path of humanity. But Hester was young and did not consider herself as caring as she wanted to be, and was frequently irritated by her failure. For it is impossible to satisfy the hard master Self. While he flatters some, he requires of others more than they can give.