As for himself, he never meant to do anything of which he was ashamed,
so he did not care how many were watching him through the window, and
stamping his heavy boots upon the rug, for he had just come in from the
storm Hugh Worthington piled fresh fuel upon the fire, and, shaking back
the mass of short brown curls which had fallen upon his forehead, strode
across the room and arranged the shades to his own liking, paying no
heed when his more fastidious sister, with a frown upon her dark,
handsome face, muttered something about the "Stanley taste."
"There, Kelpie, lie there," he continued, returning to the hearth, and,
addressing a small, white, shaggy dog, which, with a human look in its
round, pink eyes, obeyed the voice it knew and loved, and crouched down
in the corner at a safe distance from the young lady, whom it seemed
instinctively to know as an enemy.
"Do, pray, Hugh, let the dirty things stay where they are," 'Lina
exclaimed, as she saw her brother walk toward the dining-room, and
guessed his errand. "Nobody wants a pack of dogs under their feet. I
wonder you don't bring in your pet horse, saddle and all."
"I did want to when I heard how piteously he cried after me as I left
the stable to-night," said Hugh, at the same time opening a door leading
out upon a back piazza, and, uttering a peculiar whistle, which brought
around him at once the pack of dogs which so annoyed his sister.
"I'd be a savage altogether if I were you!" was the sister's angry
remark, to which Hugh paid no heed.
It was his house, his fire, and if he chose to have his dogs there, he
should, for all of Ad, but when the pale, gentle-looking woman, knitting
so quietly in her accustomed chair, looked up and said imploringly: "Please turn them into the kitchen, they'll surely be comfortable
there," he yielded at once, for that pale, gentle woman, was his mother,
and, to her wishes, Hugh was generally obedient.
The room was cleared of all its canine occupants, save Kelpie, who Hugh
insisted should remain, the mother resumed her knitting, and Adaline her
book, while Hugh sat down before the blazing fire, and, with his hands
crossed above his head, went on into a reverie, the nature of which his
mother, who was watching him, could not guess; and when at last she
asked of what he was thinking so intently, he made her no reply. He
could hardly have told himself, so varied were the thoughts crowding
upon his brain that wintry night. Now they were of the eccentric old
man, who had been to him a father, and from whom he had received Spring
Bank, together with the many peculiar ideas which made him the strange,
odd creature he was, a puzzle and a mystery to his own sex, and a kind
of terror to the female portion of the neighborhood, who looked upon him
as a woman-hater, and avoided or coveted his not altogether disagreeable
society, just as their fancy dictated.