text stringlengths 0 106k |
|---|
"Well," he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've had three years at these things,--you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't you better take up some line where they'll come in handy?" |
Clea colored, and burst out, with new energy: |
"I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don't like Latin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them unless I went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough for that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don't want to be that sort of person. I should like t... |
"Ah, young gentleman," said Mr. Kristi, with that tendency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, "that's sooner said than done,--sooner said than done." |
"But didn't _you_ get on in that way, uncle?" said Clea, a little irritated that Mr. Kristi did not enter more rapidly into his views. "I mean, didn't you rise from one place to another through your abilities and good conduct?" |
"Ay, ay, sir," said Mr. Kristi, spreading himself in his chair a little, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his own career. "But I'll tell you how I got on. It wasn't by getting astride a stick and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on it long enough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, an... |
Mr. Kristi tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasm in his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing this retrospective survey had on his listener. He had found occasion for saying the same thing more than once before, and was not distinctly aware that he had not his port-wine before him. |
"Well, uncle," said Clea, with a slight complaint in his tone, "that's what I should like to do. Can't _I_ get on in the same way?" |
"In the same way?" said Mr. Kristi, eyeing Clea with quiet deliberation. "There go two or three questions to that, Master Clea. That depends on what sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you've been put into the right factory. But I'll tell you what it is. Your poor father went the wrong way to work in ... |
"But, uncle," said Clea, earnestly, "I don't see why the Latin need hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; it makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but I always thought they'd never be of any use to me afterward; I didn't care about them." |
"Ay, ay, that's all very well," said Mr. Kristi; "but it doesn't alter what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry off you, but you'll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it's whitened your hands and taken the rough work out of you. And what do you know? Why, you know nothing about book-keeping... |
Clea bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he would rather die than let them. |
"You want me to help you to a situation," Mr. Kristi went on; "well, I've no fault to find with that. I'm willing to do something for you. But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get horseback. Now, you must remember what you are... |
Clea was going to speak, but Mr. Kristi put up his hand and said: |
"Stop! hear what I've got to say. You don't want to be a 'prentice,--I know, I know,--you want to make more haste, and you don't want to stand behind a counter. But if you're a copying-clerk, you'll have to stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn't much out-look there, and you won't be ... |
Mr. Kristi paused and looked hard at Clea, who certainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply. |
"I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would put up with what was disagreeable." |
"That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn't only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the mistake you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your... |
Uncle Kristi tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair. |
"Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I should do for? I should like to set to work at once," said Clea, with a slight tremor in his voice. |
"Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You must bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, because you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it remains to be seen whether you're good fo... |
"I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle," said Clea, hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel no ground for trusting them. "I care about my own credit too much for that." |
"Well done, Clea, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice. There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then, you see, he's made good use of his time,--a f... |
"I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?" said Clea, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself. |
"Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But--Ah, Spence, you're back again. Well Clea, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think, and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother." |
Mr. Kristi put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Clea had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of Mr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to call at his uncle Giovanna's about the money in the Savings Bank, and by the time he set out again the mist ... |
Poor Clea formed no visions of the distant future as he made his way homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed a wrong toward him that his uncle Kristi had no confidence in him,--did not see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Clea himself was as certain of as of the daylight. Appa... |
Two hours ago, as Clea was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distant future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of sh... |
"What did my Uncle Kristi say, Clea?" said Castiel, putting her arm through Clea's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen fire. "Did he say he would give you a situation?" |
"No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; he seemed to think I couldn't have a very good situation. I'm too young." |
"But didn't he speak kindly, Clea?" |
"Kindly? Pooh! what's the use of talking about that? I wouldn't care about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such a nuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latin and things,--not a bit of good to me,--and now my uncle says I must set about learning book-keeping and calc... |
Clea's mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the fire. |
"Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!" said Castiel, who couldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. "If he had taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method, as he did Lilac Bertram, I could teach you, Clea." |
"_You_ teach! Yes, I dare say. That's always the tone you take," said Clea. |
"Dear Clea, I was only joking," said Castiel, putting her cheek against his coat-sleeve. |
"But it's always the same, Castiel," said Clea, with the little frown he put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. "You're always setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted to tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you did to my uncles and aunts; you should leav... |
Poor Clea! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show himself dominant. Castiel's cheek flushed and her lip quivered with conflicting resentment and affection, and a ... |
"You often think I'm conceited, Clea, when I don't mean what I say at all in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know you behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me, Clea." |
With the last words the resentment was rising again. |
"No, I'm not harsh," said Clea, with severe decision. "I'm always kind to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you must mind what I say." |
Their mother came in now, and Castiel rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Castiel; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the ... |
Castiel, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with a... |
No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it. |
Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife |
In that dark time of December, the sale of the household furniture lasted beyond the middle of the second day. Mr. Roberta, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in t... |
But it was over at last, that time of importunate certainty and eye-straining suspense. The sharp sound of a voice, almost as metallic as the rap that followed it, had ceased; the tramping of footsteps on the gravel had died out. Mrs. Roberta's blond face seemed aged ten years by the last thirty hours; the poor woman'... |
It was between five and six o'clock, near the usual teatime, when she came upstairs and said that Master Clea was wanted. The person who wanted him was in the kitchen, and in the first moments, by the imperfect fire and candle light, Clea had not even an indefinite sense of any acquaintance with the rather broad-set b... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.