We did go through them, but with strange inattentiveness on either side.
"Nonsense, child!" impatiently exclaimed Kate; "why do you keep stopping and listening so, it is only Cornelius singing next door; what about it?"
What about it? nothing, of course; and yet you too, Kate, stopped often in your questioning to catch the tones of your brother's gay and harmonious voice; you, too, guessed that the time when he could feel happy to stay at home and sing to you was for ever gone by; you, too, when the lessons were over, sadly looked at his vacant place, and felt how far now was he whose song and whose laughter resounded from the next house. Oh, Love! invader of the heart, pitiless destroyer of its sweetest ties, for two hearts whom thou makest blest in delightful union, how many dost thou wound and divide asunder!
We had thought to spend the evening alone, but a strange chance, not without sad significance, brought us an unexpected visitor; the Reverend Morton Smalley called, for once unaccompanied by Mr. Trim. He was more gentle and charming than ever. He expressed himself very sorry not to see Cornelius, whom he evidently thought absent on some laborious errand, for looking at Kate in his benignant way over his spotless neckcloth and through his bright gold spectacles, he earnestly begged "she would not allow her brother to work so very hard."
She shook her head and smiled a little sadly.
"I fear Art absorbs him completely," gravely said Mr. Smalley.
"Oh dear no!" sighed Kate.
"We were never intended to lead a purely intellectual life," continued our guest, bending slightly forward, and raising his fore-finger with mild conviction, "and I fear your brother, Ma'am, is too much given to what I may venture to term the abstract portion of life: life has very lovely and tender realities."
Kate poked the fire impatiently.
"And then he works too hard," pensively continued Mr. Smalley, returning to his old idea that Cornelius was engaged on some arduous task: "why not give himself one evening's relaxation?"