“If you can tear yourselves away, I suppose,” said Miss Busk, through a double veil of blue gauze; for that lady's auburn ringlets reposed at the moment in the small mahogany casket beside her.
“There is not much attraction in the spot just now,” said Joseph, smiling.
“Not for the like of us, perhaps, sir,” retorted Mrs. Cronan,—“not for persons in our station; but your fashionable people, I believe, always prefer a place when the vulgar company have left it.”
“Good again,—grape and canister!” chuckled out the Captain, who seemed to derive a high enjoyment from the scene.
“Would you move a little to one side, Mr. Nelligan?” said the doctor; “my pony won't stand.”
“Oh, he's mettlesome,” said Joe, good-humoredly, as he stepped out of the way.
“That he is, sir, though he never was leader in a four-in-hand; but, you see, poor creatures of quadrupeds forget themselves down here, just like their betters!”
And the success of this sally was acknowledged by a general laugh from the company. The tone of the speakers, even more than their words, convinced Joseph that, from some cause or other, he was the object of their sarcasms; and although slow to take offence,—even to the verge of what many might have called an unfeeling indifference,—he felt their treatment most acutely. It was, then, in something like a haughty defiance that he wished them a careless good-bye, and continued his way.
“The world seems bent on puzzling me this morning,” muttered he, as he sauntered slowly on. “People treat me as though I were playing some deep game to their detriment,—I, who have no game, almost no future!” added he, despondingly. “For what avails it to attain eminence amidst such as these; and, as for the others, I was not born for them.”
To these moody thoughts succeeded others still gloomier. It had only been within a short time back that the young man had begun to appreciate the difficulties of a position to which his early successes imparted increasing embarrassment; and darkly brooding over these things, he drew near his mother's cottage. She was already at the door to meet him, with a letter in her hand.