Bad Hugh

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.