“I suppose it is a good deal in the way you look at it. And the having a home, may be.”
“Yes,” I said, “that is the great thing, or next to the having a mother.”
“What if I were seized with a fit of confessing my sins? Would that be added to the ‘general fund?’”
“I think we have all been brought up to respect a confidence,” I answered, a trifle wounded. “But it would be better to confess them to papa.”
“I might not want to;” and he gave a short laugh that did not seem at all natural. “In fact, there are very few people who suit me, or attract me—the same can, doubtless, be said of me. Do you know—and I have never owned it before in my life—I am sometimes jealous of Stuart? Every one takes to him, likes him; and he is no better than—other people. He is not always truthful; he is awfully selfish, and heartless, too. Only he has that sunny, glowing way with him; and most people are such fools that they cannot see through it. So he gets credit for sweetness, when it is only—”
“A matter of temperament,” I returned, filling up the long pause.
“Exactly. Why cannot others understand that it is so?”
“Because nearly every one likes roses better than thorns. We naturally shrink from a rough, prickly outside. No matter if the kernel is sweet, every one, you know, cannot wait years and years for it to open. And you seem to shut yourself up—”
“There is nothing to show, so I make no pretence,” he answered, in a dry, hard tone.—“I hate froth, and all that.”
“Yet I suppose the waterfall is much prettier for the spray and bubbles. Frail as they are, they reflect many beautiful tints. And I suppose God could have made apples just as well without such showers of fragrant blooms, and He may put some people in the world for the sake of the blossom and the sweetness rather than the fruit.”