'He has with his spirits though, and spirits tell on health; his especially. Now, Ethel, I know Rupert Cheviot always was a hero of yours.'
'A most unjustifiable interpretation of my not hating the poor man as much as you do,' said Ethel, much amused.
'I will say for him you are the one person he never patronizes. But I want you to look at the contrast, Ethel, between the two owls—simplicity and self-complacency; and when one really has such a splendid talent.'
'Yes, a double first class man,' said Ethel, in wilful mischief, exceedingly tickled at Lance's unconscious auxiliary, though sorry for him.
'Who cares for a first class?' exclaimed contemptuous Daisy. 'It only makes people intolerable.'
Nevertheless Lance did not spend by any means the happy Easter Sunday he had figured to himself, and many times felt that he would have done better to have deferred the crisis of his hopes and anxieties till the great feast day was at an end. For the May family were beset by Rupert Cheviot from morning till night, and Lance was tormented at moments when he most desired to free himself from the whole subject, by instinctive perception of his rivalry, and sense of the small chance that he, the half-educated tradesman, could have beside the brilliant, successful scholar, in a gentleman's position, and rising fast.
That Gertrude was cross was plain enough, and much more so to the Owl of the Academy than to the Owl of the Church tower; but Lance was sufficiently aware of the wayward nature of the damsel to ascribe her contradictoriness to the rampant coyness of inclination, and her civility to himself to kindness to her father's guest, Felix's brother and a manifest inferior, like the chemist at Ewmouth. Then her foreign tour was so often mentioned that it seemed to him that her father must have intended it as a diversion after all the agitations she had undergone, and that his coming had only been encouraged in order to put an end to the whole affair, and dispose of him and his presumption as soon as possible. So that all the kindness he received from the Doctor and Ethel only went for compassion, and he tossed about all night—true owl as he was for sleeplessness—meditating on the coming death-blow to his hopes, and whether it would be better to resign them in a conference with her father, or to put his fate to the touch in person, since he had gone so far that he could not hang back and do nothing.
The wan heavy-eyed countenance that came down in the morning moved the Doctor to the observation to his elder daughter, 'Daisy has got a fellow there more finely strung than most men. I hope she will comport herself accordingly. Tantrums won't do with that sort of organization.'
Ethel most decidedly put herself out of the way that morning, resolved not to make the holiday serve as a plea from absenting herself from the Monday care she bestowed on sundry charities, and declining the aid Gertrude offered, as a refuge from possible inroads from the Cheviot.
'You had better not waste your opportunities,' said Ethel; 'I dare say Mr. Underwood would show you the way through that thing of Mozart's that you have been despairing over.'