on your own account I do it. As far as I have seen them, I don't like your principles, your beliefs, or your nature. You're the last man I should pick out for a minister, or for any other responsible position. In every respect, except intelligence and an unlimited confidence in yourself, you seem to me unfit to be trusted. In training you for the ministry, I shall do it with the hope--not the expectation--of instilling into you some true and useful ideas and elevated thoughts. If I succeed, I shall have done the work of a whole churchful of missionaries. If I fail, I shan't recommend you to be ordained. And never forget that you will be indebted for all this to some one you've never known, and who, I am at present happy to say, don't know you. Whether or not you'll ever become acquainted is known to God alone, and I'm very glad that the matter lies entirely in His hands. Now, sir, what have you to say?"
Bressant, who had been looking steadily and curiously at the professor during the whole of this long speech, now passed his hand from his forehead down over his face and beard--a common trick of his--smiled meditatively, and said:
"I'm glad you agree to take me. I don't care for your recommendation if I have your instruction. Shall we begin to-morrow?"
There followed a discussion relative to hours, methods, and materials, which lasted very nearly until tea-time. Then, as there was still some rain falling, the professor extended to his pupil an invitation to supper, on his accepting which the old gentleman shuffled out into the entry, and called to Cornelia to come down and make the necessary preparations.
CHAPTER V.
BRESSANT PICKS A TEA-ROSE.
Supper was ready: Cornelia surveyed the table for the last time, to make sure it was all right. It was an extension-table, but the spare leaves had been removed, and it was reduced to a circle. A mellow western light from that portion of the sky unswathed in clouds streamed through the window, and did duty as a lamp. The cloth was white, and tapered down in soft folds at the corners; a pleasant profusion of sparkling china and silver, and of savory eatables, filled the circumference of the board, leaving just space enough to operate in, and no more. In the centre of the table, and perceptible both to eyes and nose on entering the room, was a tall glass dish, lined with wet green leaves, and pyramided with red strawberries. A comfortable steam ascended from the nose of the tea-pot, and vanished upward in the gloom of the ceiling; the brown toast seemed crackling to be eaten; the smooth-cut slices of marbled beef lay overlapping one another in silent plenteousness; and the knives and forks glistened to begin. Cornelia opened the entry-door, and called across to her papa in the study that supper was ready. Then she took up her position behind her chair, with one hand resting on its back, and a silent determination that the visitor, whoever he was, should be impressed with her dignity, condescension, and good looks.
"This is my daughter Cornelia. Mr. Bressant is going to be a pupil of mine, my dear," said the professor, as he and Bressant advanced into the room.
He gave his hand an introductory wave in Cornelia's direction as he spoke, but probably did not speak loud enough to be distinctly beard by his guest. Nevertheless, seeing the motion and the lady, Bressant inclined forward his shoulders with an elastic readiness of bearing which was customary with him, in spite of his unusual stature, and then took his place at the table without bestowing any further attention upon her. It passed through Cornelia's mind, as she lifted the tea-pot, that Mr. Bressant was outrageously conceited, and should be taken down at the first opportunity. She had made a very graceful courtesy, and it was not to be overlooked in that way with impunity.
"Milk and sugar, sir?" said she, interrogatively, raising her eyes to the young man's face with a somewhat gratuitous formality of manner, and holding a piece of sugar suspended over the cup.
Bressant had certainly been looking in her direction as she spoke; he had the opposite place to her at table; but instead of replying, even with a motion of the head, he, after a moment, turned to Professor Valeyon, who was gently oscillating himself in the rocking-chair he always occupied at meals, and asked him whether he knew any thing about a place in town called "Abbie's Boarding-house."
Cornelia laid down the sugar and tongs, and looked very insulted and flushed. What sort of a creature was this her papa had brought to his supper-table? Papa, who had noticed the awkward turn, and was tickled by the humor thereof, could not forbear to give evidence of amusement, insomuch that his daughter, who was by no means of a lymphatic temperament, was almost ready to leave the table, or burst into tears with injured and astonished dignity.
Bressant, with that exceeding quickness of perception which most persons with his infirmity possess under such circumstances, transferred his glance from the professor to the young lady, and at once arrived at a pretty correct understanding of the difficulty. He was not embarrassed, for it had probably never occurred to him that his deafness was so much a defect as a difference of organization, and he lost no time in explaining matters in his customary way.
"I'm deaf; when you talk to me you must speak loud," said he, looking full at Cornelia's disturbed face.
Miss Valeyon had never been so thoroughly discomfited. She was smitten on three sides at once. Bad enough to be insulted; worse, having become properly angry, to find no insult was meant; and, worst of all, to have been the means of drawing attention, by her bad temper, to a physical infirmity in her papa's guest. She abandoned upon the instant all intention of being ceremonious and imposing, and only thought how she might atone, to her papa and to Bressant, for her ill-behavior.
He would not take tea--nothing but water; and, as Cornelia proceeded in silence to pour out her papa's cup, the latter answered Bressant's question about the boarding-house.
"Know it very well, sir. Very good house. What have you heard about it?"
"Nothing more than that; I asked a man at the depot. My trunk has been taken there. I'm satisfied if the woman 'Abbie' is respectable, and gives me enough to eat." The young man had accepted Cornelia's tender of a slice of beef, and seemed fully equal to doing it again.
"The 'woman Abbie' respectable, sir!" exclaimed the professor in half-muzzled ire; but he checked himself suddenly, and tried to be contented with shoving his plate, tumbler, and tea-cup, to and fro before him. "I could not have recommended you to a better person," he added presently, evidently putting a restraint upon himself. "I have the highest--I hold her in very high estimation, sir."
Bressant nodded, and presently took some more of the beef.
"Have you seen Abbie yet, Mr. Bressant?" inquired Cornelia in a timid tone, which, however, was deprived of all melody by the effort to suit it to the young man's ears. But it was necessary to say something.
"Oh, no!" he replied, smiling at her in the pure good-nature of physical complacency, and noticing for the first time that she was an agreeable spectacle. He judged absolutely and primitively, never having had that experience of women which might have enabled him to make comparison the base of his opinion. "I came right up here from the depot. My trunk was sent to the boarding-house; it will hire a room for me, I suppose."
At this sally, Cornelia smiled very graciously, though ten minutes before she would have snubbed it promptly. She had had some experience with the young men of the village--easy victims--and had acquired a rather good opinion of her satirical powers. But Bressant was a peculiar case; his deafness enlisted her compassion and forbearance, and her own late rudeness made her gentle. Perhaps the young gentleman was not so far out of the way in failing to consider his infirmity a disadvantage.
Meanwhile, Professor Valeyon was swinging backward and forward, ever and anon pausing to take a bite or a sup, and eying the stem of
