“And insects are all of the same value in our eyes. Yet we tolerate a fly where we should think a caterpillar out of place.”
“Well, I don’t want to know anything about flies and caterpillars, but I have adopted her as my daughter, and she is to be treated accordingly,” said Captain Pennant, with increased obstinacy because of his wife’s unexpected restiveness. “I believe that God has sent her to us as a precious gift and blessing, because among our own dear children we have not had a girl.”
He had his own way, to all appearances, as he always had. Deborah Audaer was brought up with his sons, and treated as a young lady. But equally, of course, Mrs. Pennant had her own way more surely; for, without any overt act of unkindness, she made the girl feel, and the boys feel, that between them were no ties of blood.
Then, as they all grew up, the intriguing old lady had her punishment. For, one and all, the boys fell in love with Deborah, and when she had reached the age of nineteen they were all suitors for her hand.
Of course, the girl was true to her sex, and gave her heart where it was least wanted. Hervey, the youngest boy, a slow, broad-shouldered giant with a ruddy face and ripe-corn colored hair, who had a didactic manner and a great reputation for wisdom, was only her own age, and therefore too young for her, she said. He was a great theorist, an authority upon “style” in rowing and “seat” in riding, although he could neither pull a boat along nor stick on a horse.
A dash of the kindly prig there was about Hervey, perhaps, and a little too strong a sense that other people didn’t count for much when he was about. But he was fond of Deborah, and he thought that he and she would make quite the grandest couple in the world, if only that unappreciative beast, Rees, were out of the way.
Godwin, the second son, was twenty-one; a matter-of-fact young man, of strictly moderate abilities, plenty of common sense, who never did anything that he did not do well, but in a plodding, methodical manner, without show or fuss. He had never given any trouble to anybody, and was in consequence thought very little of by anybody, particularly by his two brothers, who always exceeded their allowances while he managed to save out of his, the most meagre of the three, and who lived idly at home making up their minds “what they should be,” while he had been for two years going backwards and forwards to a bank at Monmouth, where he had got himself a situation. He adored Deborah in a prosaic manner, keeping her in sweets, of which she was childishly fond, doing her shopping for her with twice as much taste and tact as she would have shown herself, and eking out the few pounds she could spare for this purpose with money of his own, so that she was filled with admiration and astonishment at his “bargains.”
Deborah liked both Hervey and Godwin, but it was on Rees that she poured out all the devotion of a passionate and generous nature. Rees, the handsome, the daring, the brilliant, the favorite of the whole county, adored and indulged by his mother, petted and spoiled by Lord St. Austell, who put his horses, his dog-cart, his yacht, his guns at the service of the lad, whom he treated with smiling, good-humored fondness, as if Rees had been his own son. As a matter of course, the young fellow’s character suffered from all this spoiling, as Captain Pennant, far-sighted in this matter only, had early foreboded.
“Rees is one of those unlucky lads who are born to be ruined,” he had predicted, giving thereby a great shock to his wife, who was as weak as water where her eldest born was concerned, and who flattered herself, poor lady, that her prayers would counteract the effects of reckless indulgence.
At three-and-twenty Rees was the handsomest young fellow in the county. Of the middle height only and slightly built, with delicate features, curly black hair, and black eyes full of fun and fire, his appearance was irresistibly attractive to man, woman, child, and animal. His dog loved Rees with a devotion uncommon even in a dog. Careful mothers were afraid of him, for there was not a pretty girl in the countryside who would not snub the richest bachelor in the principality for the sake of the supper dance with Rees Pennant.