Bressant

"It won't do--must be attended to! The good education I was at such

pains to give them--it'll only make them miserable if they're to wear

their lives out here. I'm getting old and selfish--that's the truth of

the matter. I want to sit here, and have my girls take care of me!

Pshaw!

"Sophie, now--well, perhaps she don't need it so much, yet; she's

younger than her sister, and has a good deal more internal resource:

besides, she's too delicate at present. But Neelie--Neelie ought to go

at once--this very summer. She needs an enormous deal of action and

excitement, bodily and mental both, to keep her in wholesome condition.

Has that same restless, feverish devil in her that I used to have; never

do to let it feed upon itself! must get her absorbed in outside things!

"But what am I to do?" resumed the professor, sitting up in his chair,

and shaking out his shirt-sleeves--for the heat of his meditations had

brought on a perspiration; "what can I do--eh? Sophie not in condition

to travel--can't leave her to take Cornelia--no one else to take

her--and she can't go alone, that's certain! Humph!"

Professor Valeyon paused in his soliloquy, like a man who has turned

into a closed court under the impression that it is a thoroughfare, and

stared down with upwrinkled forehead at the sole of the kicked-off

slipper, indulging the while in a mental calculation of how many days it

would take for the hole near the toe to work down to the hole under the

instep, and thus render problematical the possibility of keeping the

shoe on at all. It might take three weeks, or, say at the utmost, a

month; one month from the present time. It was at the present time about

the 15th of June, the 14th or the 15th, say the 15th! Well, then, on the

15th of July the slipper would be worn out; in all human probability the

weather would be even hotter then than it was now; and yet, in the face

of that heat he would be obliged to go over to the village, get Jonas

Hastings to fit him with a new pair, and then go through the long agony

of breaking them in! At the thought, great drops formed on the old

gentleman's nose, and ran suddenly down into his white mustache.

But this digression of thought was but superficial, and the sense that

something serious underlaid it remained always latent. The professor

leaned back in his chair, and sighed again heavily. It was true that he

was growing old, and now that he contemplated action, he felt that in

the last nine years the inertia of age had gained upon him. Besides, he

greatly loved his daughters, and though it is easy to say that the

greatest love is the greatest unselfishness, yet do we find a weakness

in our hearts which we cannot believe wholly wrong, strongly prompting

us to yearn and cling--even unwisely--to those who have our best

affection. "And what seems wise to-day may be proved folly to-morrow,"

is our argument, "so let us cling to the good we have."