"While I am mistress of your household, brother, I shall try to maintain its dignity and respectability. Do you consider, Benjamin, how much these are necessary to your influence?"
"Without doubt, Eliza; yet I cannot perceive how these would suffer by dealing gently with this unfortunate child. A very tender affection for her has grown upon me, Eliza; it would sadden me grievously, if she were to go out from among us bearing unkind thoughts."
"And is your affection strong enough, Benjamin, to make you forget all social proprieties, and the honorable name of our family, and to wish her stay here as the wife of Reuben?"
The Doctor may have winced a little at this; and possibly a touch of worldly pride entered into his reply.
"In this matter, Eliza, I think the wish of Maverick is to be respected."
"Pah! For my part, I respect much more the Johns' name."
As the spinster retired to her room, after being overheated in the discussion, in which the calmness of the Doctor, and the news he had communicated, contributed almost equally to her frenzy, she cast a look, in passing, upon the bed-chamber of Adèle. There were all the delicate fixtures, in which she had taken such a motherly pride,—the spotless curtains, the cherished vases, and certain toilette adornments,—her gifts,—by each one of which she had hoped to win a point in the accomplishment of her ambitious project. In the flush of her disappointment she could almost have torn down the neatly adjusted drapery, and put to confusion this triumph of her housewifely skill. But cooler thoughts succeeded; and, passing on into her own chamber, she threw herself into her familiar rocking-chair and entered upon a long train of reflections, whose result will very likely have their bearing upon the development of our story.
XLIV.
About this time, Phil Elderkin had come back from his trip to the West Indies,—not a little bronzed by the fierce suns he had met there, but stalwart as ever, with his old free, frank manner, to which he had superadded a little of that easy confidence and self-poise which come of wide intercourse with the world. All the village greeted him kindly; for there was not a man or a woman in it who bore Phil Elderkin a grudge,—unless it may have been the schoolmaster, who, knowing what a dullard Phil had been at his books, had to bear some measure of the reproach which belonged to his slow progress. But there are some young gentlemen (not, however, so many as dull fellows are apt to think) who ripen best by a reading of the world, instead of books; and Phil Elderkin was eminently one of them. The old Squire took a pride he had never anticipated in walking down the street arm in arm with his stalwart son, (whose support, indeed, the old gentleman was beginning to need,) and in watching the admiring glances of the passers-by, and of such old cronies as stopped to shake hands and pass a word or two with the Squire's youngest boy. There is this pleasant feature about such quiet, out-of-the-way New England towns, (or was twenty-five years since,) that the old people never forget to feel a pride in the young men, who, having gone out from their borders to try their fortunes, win any measure of success. Of course they are apt to attribute it, with a pleasant vanity, to their own good advice or example; but this by no means detracts from the cordiality of their praises. Phil won all this,—since it was hinted, on the best possible authority, that he had tried certain business chances on his own account in the West Indies, which promised the grandest success.
Even the Doctor had said, "You have reason to be proud of your boy, Squire. I trust that in time he may join piety to prudence."
"Hope he may, hope he may, Doctor," said the Squire. "Fine stout lad, isn't he, Doctor?"
Of course Phil had met early with Reuben, and with the fresh spirit of
