Bressant

"Three months at least," replied the surgeon; "more if you worry

yourself about it."

"Three months!" repeated the young man, aghast. "What's to become of my

studies? I can't hold a book; I can't write; I had to have my breakfast

fed to me this morning," continued he, biting his mustache and looking

away. The professor smiled thoughtfully.

"I have hopes," said he, "that you'll know more about Divinity when you

come out of this room than you did before you went into it. We'll see

when the time comes."

"I've found out already that my bones are like other men's," remarked

Bressant, with a sigh.

"So much the better," returned the old man. "You never would have

learned that out of your Hebrew Lexicon. The best way to reach this

young fellow's soul is through his body," declared he, silently, to the

bandage he was preparing for the broken head. "This is nothing but a

blessing in disguise." But he had too much tact to carry the

conversation further, and presently left his patient alone to digest

his breakfast and the lesson it had inculcated.

This was Cornelia's last day at home; she was to take the eight-o'clock

train next morning to the city. The young lady's mood was unequal:

sometimes she drooped; anon would break forth into much talk and

merriment, which would evaporate almost as quickly as the froth of

champagne. This was her first departure from home, and the ease,

freedom, and beloved old ways of home-life, assumed more of their true

value in her eyes. She had acquired a sentiment of awe for Aunt

Margaret's grandeur. She would be obliged to sleep in corsets and

high-heeled shoes; everybody would be going through the figures of a

stately minuet all day long.

Then she began to feel in advance the wrench of separating from those

with whom her life had been spent, and from one other in whose company

she had lived more--so it seemed to her--than in all the years since she

ceased to be a child. Bressant was very prominent in her thoughts; nor

could she be blamed for this, for the short acquaintance bad been

emphasized by a disproportional number of memorable events: First, there

was the thunder-storm evening by the fountain; afterward, the dance at

Abbie's; and, following in quick succession, the celestial arch, the

walk homeward, and the catastrophe in which he had borne the chief part.

Besides, he was so different from common men.

"So perfectly natural and unaffected," she argued to herself. "He means

all he says; of course I shouldn't let him say such things to me as he

does if it weren't so; but it would be affectation in me to object to

it as it is!"--a most plausible deduction, by-the-way, but dangerous to

act upon. To persuade herself that, because he was an exceptional sort

of person, his plain way of talking to her was justifiable, was to

establish a secret understanding between him and herself, which placed

her at a disadvantage to begin with; and unreservedly to accept

compliments, even ingenuous ones, was to indulge in a luxury that must

ultimately render callous her moral sensitiveness and refinement.