"I have no patience for it; then it is hard work, and I am indolent."
"And literature?"
"Bid me become one of the builders of the Tower of Babel," hastily interrupted Cornelius. "No, Smalley, the office, with its paltry salary, moderate labour, and, heaven be praised for it, its absence from care, is the thing for me." He laid down the poker, and reclined back in his chair with careless indolence. Mr. Smalley slowly rubbed his forehead with his forefinger, and looked at Cornelius through his glasses and over his neckcloth, with a gently puzzled air. Then he turned to Miss O'Reilly, and said simply—
"Your brother's philosophy puts me to shame, Ma'am: yet I used to think him ambitious, and I remember that once—I mean no reflection—one of the older boys having doubted his ability to—to do something or other—our dear friend being somewhat hasty, pushed him so that he fell."
"Say I knocked him down," replied Cornelius, reddening and trying to laugh. "Well, those days are gone, and with them the knocking-down propensity, as well as the ambition: I have become as meek and lowly as a lamb."
He threw back his head with the clear keen look of a hawk, and a curl of the lip implying no great degree of meekness.
"Yes," quietly said Kate from her corner, "the child is not always father of the man."
Cornelius bit his lip; Mr. Trim, who was again napping, woke up with a
Ha! ha! Then, standing up to look at the clock on the mantelpiece, asked
Mr. Smalley "if he called this Christian conduct."
"You know," he added with feeling reproach, "that we have that appointment at seven with Jameson, that I am half blind, the most unfortunate fellow for dozing and forgetting, whilst you always have your wits about you, and are quite a telescope for seeing. Oh! Smalley!" He shook his head at him, peering around the room with eyes that looked smaller than ever. Mr. Smalley attempted a justification on the score of not remembering that the appointment had been made; but Leopold Trim hinted that it was too much to expect him to believe that; though, having been always more or less victimized and imposed upon by Smalley, he was getting used to it. Mr. Smalley expressed his penitence by rising at once, and this brought their visit to an abrupt close. The door was scarcely shut on them, when Miss O'Reilly, poking the fire with great vigour and vivacity, looked up at Cornelius and said—
"I don't believe in Trim; I don't believe in his voice; in his bark and whistle laugh: in his eyes or in his dozing: I don't believe in him at all."