“You’re a brute, Bab,” she cried.
“I’ll tell mamma!”
“Do, you little wretch!” returned Barbara,
whose flushed face looked lovely childlike in its
indignation beside the furious phiz of the tormenting
imp.
The monkey-creature left the room, sobbing; and Barbara
turned and was gone before Richard could thank her.
He heard no more of the matter, and for some time
had no farther trouble with Victoria.
Barbara had the kindest of hearts, but there was nothing
soft about her She held it a sin to spoil any
animal, not to say a child. For she had a strong
feeling, initiated possibly by her black nurse, that
the animals went on living after death, whence she
counted it a shame not to teach them; and held that,
if a sharp cut would make child or dog behave properly,
the woman was no lover of either who would spare it.
RICHARD AND WINGFOLD.
Barbara had more than once or twice heard Mr. Wingfold
preach, but had not once listened, or oven waked to
the fact that she had not listened. Unaccustomed
in childhood to any special regard of the Sunday, she
had neither pleasant nor unpleasant associations with
church-going; but she liked a good many things better,
and as she always did as she liked except she saw
reason to the contrary, she had hitherto gone to church
rather seldom. She might perhaps have sooner learned
to go regularly but for her mother’s extraordinary
behaviour there: certainly she could not sit
in the same pew with her reading her novel. Since
Mr. Wingfold had taken the part of the prophet Nathan,
and rebuked her, she had indeed ceased to go to church,
but Barbara, as I have said, was as yet only now and
then drawn thitherward.
Mr. Wingfold was almost as different from the clergyman
of Richard’s idea, as was Richard’s imagined
God from any believable idea of God. The two
men had never yet met, for what should bring a working-man
and the clergyman of the next parish together?
But one morning—he often went for a walk
in the early morning—Richard saw before
him, in the middle of a field-path, seated on a stile
and stopping his way, the back of a man in a gray
suit, evidently enjoying, like himself, the hour before
sunrise. He knew somehow that he was not a working-man,
but he did not suspect him one of the obnoxious class
which lives by fooling itself and others. Wingfold
heard Richard’s step, looked round, knew him
at once an artisan of some sort, and saw in him signs
of purpose and character strong for his years.
“Jolly morning!” he said.
“It is indeed, sir!” answered Richard.
“I like a walk in the morning better than at
any other time of the day!” said Wingfold.
“Well, sir, I do so too, though I can’t
tell why. I’ve often tried, but I haven’t
yet found out what makes the morning so different.”
“Come!” thought the clergyman; “here’s
something I haven’t met with too much of!”
