Mr. William Reynolds arrived late, perhaps because he delayed too long
over the niceties of his toilet. He was a country young man, fashioned
upon a well-worn last. His occupation for several years past had been to
attend to the furnishing and driving of a milk-cart, and, very likely,
it was this which had hindered the proper development of his figure. At
all events, he was stoutest where it is generally thought advisable to
be lean, and narrow where popular prejudice demands breadth. His knees
were more conspicuous than his legs, and his elbows than his arms. His
face was striking, chiefly because an accident in early life had
prostrated his nose; the expression, though lacking force, was in the
main good-natured, the eyes were modestly veiled behind a pair of
eye-glasses, which stayed on, as it were, by accident.
Mr. Reynolds was an admirer of Cornelia's; a fact which was the occasion
of much pleasant remark and easy witticism. More serious consequences
were not likely to ensue, for such men as he seldom attain to be other
than indirectly useful or mildly obnoxious to their fellow-creatures.
But the strongest instincts he had were social; and it was touching to
observe the earnestness with which they urged him to lumber the path of
fashion and gay life. He nearly broke his own heart, and unseated his
instructor's reason, in his efforts to learn dancing; and, to secure
elegant apparel for Sundays and parties, he would forswear the butcher's
wagon for months at a time. Once in a while he would smoke an Havana
cigar from the assortment to be found at the grocery-store on the
corner, and sometimes, when a national holiday or the gloom of
unrequited love rendered strong measures a necessity, he would become
recklessly convivial over muddy whisky-and-water amid the spittoons and
colored prints of the hotel bar-room.
On the present evening he arrived late, and came upon Cornelia and
Bressant just as the latter was proposing to obtain the professor's
consent to accompanying her home on foot.
Mr. Reynolds advanced, smiling; a polka was being played at the moment,
and he playfully contorted his figure and balanced his head from side to
side in time with the tune, while with his right forefinger he beckoned
winningly to Miss Valeyon to join him in the dance. Bressant gave an
involuntary shudder of disgust; it seemed to him a grisly caricature of
the inspiration he himself had felt at the beginning of the evening. But
Cornelia was equal to the emergency.
"If you'll go and ask papa now," said she, "I'll take care of this
person meantime. He's known me so long, I don't want to be impolite to
him."
A good deal of harm may be done in this world by what is called a
reluctance to be uncivil. There is generally more selfishness than
consideration about it. All sincere admiration, no matter from how low a
source, is grateful to us. Cornelia knew that Bill Reynolds worshipped
her with his whole small capacity, and she was unwilling to deny herself
the miserable little incense, and give him plainly to understand that,
though it was not distasteful to her, he was. And who could blame her
for not wanting to hurt his feelings?