"But they may yet become very prominent in society," said Hope,--"they or their pupils or their children. At any rate, it is as certain that the noblest lives will have most influence in the end, as that two and two make four."
"Is that certain?" said Philip. "Perhaps there are worlds where two and two do not make just that desirable amount."
"I trust there are," said Aunt Jane. "Perhaps I was intended to be born in one of them, and that is why my housekeeping accounts never add up."
Here hope was called away, and Emilia saucily murmured, "Sour grapes!"
"Not a bit of it!" cried Kate, indignantly. "Hope might have anything in society she wishes, if she would only give up some of her own plans, and let me choose her dresses, and her rich uncles pay for them. Count Posen told me, only yesterday, that there was not a girl in Oldport with such an air as hers."
"Not Kate herself?" said Emilia, slyly.
"I?" said Kate. "What am I? A silly chit of a thing, with about a dozen ideas in my head, nearly every one of which was planted there by Hope. I like the nonsense of the world very well as it is, and without her I should have cared for nothing else. Count Posen asked me the other day, which country produced on the whole the most womanly women, France or America. He is one of the few foreigners who expect a rational answer. So I told him that I knew very little of Frenchwomen personally, but that I had read French novels ever since I was born, and there was not a woman worthy to be compared with Hope in any of them, except Consuelo, and even she told lies."
"Do not begin upon Hope," said Aunt Jane. "It is the only subject on which Kate can be tedious. Tell me about the dresses. Were people over-dressed or under-dressed?"
"Under-dressed," said Phil. "Miss Ingleside had a half-inch strip of muslin over her shoulder."
Here Philip followed Hope out of the room, and Emilia presently followed him.
"Tell on!" said Aunt Jane. "How did Philip enjoy himself?"
"He is easily amused, you know," said Kate. "He likes to observe people, and to shoot folly as it flies."
"It does not fly," retorted the elder lady. "I wish it did.
You can shoot it sitting, at least where Philip is."
"Auntie," said Kate, "tell me truly your objection to Philip.
I think you did not like his parents. Had he not a good mother?"
"She was good," said Aunt Jane, reluctantly, "but it was that kind of goodness which is quite offensive."
"And did you know his father well?"
"Know him!" exclaimed Aunt Jane. "I should think I did. I have sat up all night to hate him."
"That was very wrong," said Kate, decisively. "You do not mean that. You only mean that you did not admire him very much."
"I never admired a dozen people in my life, Kate. I once made a list of them. There were six women, three men, and a Newfoundland dog."
"What happened?" said Kate. "The Is-raelites died after Pharaoh, or somebody, numbered them. Did anything happen to yours?"
"It was worse with mine," said Aunt Jane. "I grew tired of some and others I forgot, till at last there was nobody left but the dog, and he died."
"Was Philip's father one of them?"
"No."
"Tell me about him," said Kate, firmly.
"Ruth," said the elder lady, as her young handmaiden passed the door with her wonted demureness, "come here; no, get me a glass of water. Kate! I shall die of that girl. She does some idiotic thing, and then she looks in here with that contented, beaming look. There is an air of baseless happiness about her that drives me nearly frantic."
"Never mind about that," persisted Kate. "Tell me about Philip's father. What was the matter with him?"
"My dear," Aunt Jane at last answered,--with that fearful moderation to which she usually resorted when even her stock of superlatives was exhausted,--"he belonged to a family for whom truth possessed even less than the usual attractions."
This neat epitaph implied the erection of a final tombstone over the whole race, and Kate asked no more.
Meantime Malbone sat at the western door with Harry, and was running on with one of his tirades, half jest, half earnest, against American society.
"In America," he said, "everything which does not tend to money is thought to be wasted, as our Quaker neighbor thinks the children's croquet-ground wasted, because it is not a potato field."
"Not just!" cried Harry. "Nowhere is there more respect for those who give their lives to intellectual pursuits."
"What are intellectual pursuits?" said Philip. "Editing daily newspapers? Teaching arithmetic to children? I see no others flourishing hereabouts."
"Science and literature," answered Harry.
"Who cares for literature in America," said Philip, "after a man rises three inches above the newspaper level? Nobody reads Thoreau; only an insignificant fraction read Emerson, or even Hawthorne. The majority of people have hardly even heard their names. What inducement has a writer? Nobody has any weight in America who is not in Congress, and nobody gets into Congress without the necessity of bribing or button-holing men whom he despises."
"But you do not care for public life?" said Harry.
"No," said Malbone, "therefore this does not trouble me, but it troubles you. I am content. My digestion is good. I can always amuse myself. Why are you not satisfied?"
"Because you are not," said Harry. "You are dissatisfied with men, and so you care chiefly to amuse yourself with women and children."
