Poor Tom! 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. Maggie’s cheek flushed
and her lip quivered with conflicting resentment and
affection, and a certain awe as well as admiration
of Tom’s firmer and more effective character.
She did not answer immediately; very angry words rose
to her lips, but they were driven back again, and
she said at last:
“You often think I’m conceited, Tom, 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, Tom.”
With the last words the resentment was rising again.
“No, I’m not harsh,” said Tom, 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 Maggie 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 Maggie; there was no
indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when
she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts.
In books there were people who were always agreeable
or tender, and delighted to do things that made one
happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding
fault. The world outside the books was not a
happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where
people behaved the best to those they did not pretend
to love, and that did not belong to them. And
if life had no love in it, what else was there for
Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship
of her mother’s narrow griefs, perhaps of her
father’s heart-cutting childish dependence.
There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth,
when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long
memories, no superadded life in the life of others;
though we who looked on think lightly of such premature
despair, as if our vision of the future lightened
the blind sufferer’s present.
Maggie, 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
an ear straining after dreamy music that died away
and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious
yearning for something that would link together the
wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and
give her soul a sense of home in it.
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
