She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who was refreshed by the odor and color of these flowers; and hung over her fondly, and gave it to her.
"And I might have this prize for the asking!" Pen thought, with a thrill of triumph, as he looked at the kindly girl. "Why, she is as beautiful and as generous as her roses." The image of the two women remained forever after in his mind, and he never recalled it but the tears came into his eyes.
Before very many weeks' intimacy with her new acquaintance, however, Miss Laura was obliged to give in to Helen's opinion, and own that the muse was selfish, unkind, and inconstant. Of course Blanche confided to her bosom friend all the little griefs and domestic annoyances; how the family could not comprehend her, and she moved among them an isolated being; how her poor mamma's education had been neglected, and she was forced to blush for her blunders; how Sir Francis was a weak person deplorably unintellectual, and only happy when smoking his odious cigars; how, since the birth of her little brother, she had seen her mother's precious affection, which she valued more than any thing in life, estranged from her once darling daughter; how she was alone, alone, alone in the world.
But these griefs, real and heart-rending though they might be to a young lady of exquisite sensibility, did not convince Laura of the propriety of Blanche's conduct in many small incidents of life. Little Frank, for instance, might be very provoking, and might have deprived Blanche of her mamma's affection, but this was no reason why Blanche should box the child's ears because he upset a glass of water over her drawing, and why she should call him many opprobrious names in the English and French language; and the preference accorded to little Frank was certainly no reason why Blanche should give herself imperial airs of command toward the boy's governess, and send that young lady upon messages through the house to bring her book or to fetch her pocket-handkerchief. When a domestic performed an errand for honest Laura, she was always thankful and pleased; whereas she could not but perceive that the little muse had not the slightest scruple in giving her commands to all the world round about her, and in disturbing any body's ease or comfort, in order to administer to her own. It was Laura's first experience in friendship; and it pained the kind creature's heart, to be obliged to give up as delusions, one by one, those charms and brilliant qualities in which her fancy had dressed her new friend, and to find that the fascinating little fairy was but a mortal, and not a very amiable mortal, after all. What generous person is there that has not been so deceived in his time?—what person, perhaps, that has not so disappointed others in his turn?
After the scene with little Frank, in which that refractory son and heir of the house of Clavering, had received the compliments in French and English, and the accompanying box on the ear from his sister, Miss Laura, who had plenty of humor, could not help calling to mind some very touching and tender verses which the muse had read to her out of Mes Larmes, and which began, "My pretty baby brother, may angels guard thy rest," in which the muse, after complimenting the baby upon the station in life which it was about to occupy, and contrasting it with her own lonely condition, vowed, nevertheless, that the angel boy would never enjoy such affection as hers was, or find in the false world before him any thing so constant and tender as a sister's heart. "It may be," the forlorn one said, "it may be, you will slight it, my pretty baby sweet, you will spurn me from your bosom, I'll cling around your feet! Oh let me, let me love you! the world will prove to you as false as 'tis to others, but I am ever true." And behold the muse was boxing the darling brother's ears instead of kneeling at his feet, and giving Miss Laura her first lesson in the Cynical philosophy—not quite her first, however—something like this selfishness and waywardness, something like this contrast between practice and poetry, between grand versified aspirations and every-day life, she had witnessed at home in the person of our young friend Mr. Pen.
But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed natural, somehow, that he should be self-willed, and should have his own way. And under his waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous heart. O it was hard that such a diamond should be changed away against such a false stone as this. In a word, Laura began to be tired of her admired Blanche. She had assayed her, and found her not true; and her former admiration and delight, which she had expressed with her accustomed generous artlessness, gave way to a feeling, which we shall not call contempt, but which was very near it; and which caused Laura to adopt toward Miss Amory, a grave and tranquil tone of superiority, which was at first by no means to the muse's liking. Nobody likes to be found out, or having held a high place, to submit to step down.
The consciousness that this event was impending did not serve to increase Miss Blanche's good humor, and as it made her peevish and dissatisfied with herself, it probably rendered her even less agreeable to the persons round about her. So there arose one fatal day a battle-royal between dearest Blanche and dearest Laura, in which the friendship between them was all but slain outright. Dearest Blanche had been unusually capricious and wicked on this day. She had been insolent to her mother; savage with little Frank; odiously impertinent in her behavior to the boy's governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend (for the little tyrant was of a timid feline nature, and only used her claws upon those who were weaker than herself) she maltreated all these, and especially poor Pincott, who was menial, confidante, companion (slave always), according to the caprice of her young mistress.
This girl who had been sitting in the room with the young ladies, being driven thence in tears, occasioned by the cruelty of her mistress, and raked with a parting sarcasm as she went sobbing from the door, Laura fairly broke out into a loud and indignant invective—wondered how one so young could forget the deference owing to her elders as well as to her inferiors in station; and professing so much sensibility of her own, could torture the feelings of others so wantonly. Laura told her friend that her conduct was absolutely wicked, and that she ought to ask pardon of Heaven on her knees for it. And having delivered herself of a hot and voluble speech whereof the delivery astonished the speaker as much almost as her auditor, she ran to her bonnet and shawl, and went home across the park, in a great flurry and perturbation, and to the surprise of Mrs. Pendennis, who had not expected her until night.