"At last I am at your service. You must stay me with flagons (of champagne), and comfort me with (pine) apples;" he said, profanely enough, "for I am sick of heiresses!"
CHAPTER X.
Judge Provost, whose wife and daughters were the leaders of fashion in Hamilton, was himself a social Greatheart. Having brought to bear upon various vexed domestic problems the force of his astute mind and enlightened Christianity, he had arrived at a series of conclusions equally creditable to both. The pertinence of his deductions was so obvious to the impartial reasoner as to excite his surprise, that the great body of good and sensible men and women did not adopt and practise them. For example, he maintained first, that the best way to keep men out of jails, was to provide them with abodes so comfortable that they would prefer these to stone cells and prison fare: secondly, as a modification of the same principle, that, since amusements are necessary to the happiness of the young, they should be provided with lawful diversions in their own homes, lest they should seek unlawful abroad; thirdly, in unconscious plagiarism of the wise and genial author of "Annals of a Country Neighborhood," he held and believed for certain, that the surest way to make an indifferent thing bad, was for good people to hold themselves aloof from doing it.
Acting upon these principles, the eminent jurist built a bowling-alley at the back of his garden; caused his eight children to be instructed in music and dancing, and encouraged them to pursue these recreations in his parlors,—where, also, lay backgammon and chess board in full sight. Finally, he crowned their gratification while he drew upon himself the reprobation of the zealots and puritans among his neighbors, by throwing a wing out from his already spacious residence, expressly for a billiard-room. It was a pretty place, and a cheerful, with its green carpets and lounges, tinted walls, and long French windows, and was, as may be supposed, a popular resort with those of the college students who had the entrée, as well as with the young Provosts and their friends of both sexes in the town. A happy, hospitable set were the young Provosts—the four sisters and four brothers—affectionate to one another, dutiful and loving to the parents to whose judicious affection they owed their sunny childhood and youth. Jessie liked them better than she did any other family in Hamilton, while Fanny, the second daughter, had taken a fancy to her at first sight, which was ripening into a cordial friendship.
The billiard-room was very bright with afternoon sunshine, and merry with the chatter of gay voices, one day late in February, when a party of six or eight girls was collected about the table—four playing, the others looking on and talking, sometimes of the game in progress, sometimes upon other subjects—all in a familiar yet ladylike way.
"Somebody mark for me, please!" said a ruddy-cheeked damsel who had never, by any chance, won a game, and whose principal points were the point she made of missing every shot. "If I should hit anything it would be a pity not to get credit for it. Now—all of you look and learn!"
She poised the cue with a superabundance of caution, pursing up her lips into an O, as she took aim; dashed at the white ball nearest her, which flew frantically from side to side of the board, rebounding twice from the cushion, and, at last, popping into a distant pocket, having dodged every other ball with a malicious ingenuity eminently illustrative of the proverbial perversity of inanimate things.
"Better luck next time!" said the player, invincibly good-humored, resigning her place. "If there is anything in perseverance and hope, I shall do it yet, some day, and astonish you all."