Captain Flin and his wife are coming down the street in full gala
attire. The pipe has vanished, but the card-case is still conspicuous
amid the folds of a stiffly-starched embroidered handkerchief. They have
been to see the Airlys, and have posted themselves up in all their
affairs, and they are now _en route_ to return the numerous visits that
have been paid to their new house and furniture. If that could have been
put upon rollers and trundled about to drop its card, it would have been
quite an acceptable deputy, and would have saved a world of
embarrassment to the unsophisticated couple.
There's a worthy man upon the walk at a short distance from them. He
shuffles along with his heavy gait and home-spun dress, but there is a
good honest frankness in his face that commends him to the passers-by.
He has almost reached them, and is about to give some token of
recognition, when they whisk across the street with averted looks.
Didn't I tell you so, Captain Flin? The twelvemonth lacks a week, and
Jerry Doolan has gone to his home with downcast mien and a heavy heart,
because his old friend has purposely avoided him. Don't I know
something of human nature, and how contaminating heaped-up coppers are?
It is not every body that will bear even a moderate degree of wealth,
particularly among those who have no other foundation to build their
consequence upon. You are not wholly given over yet, Captain Flin, for
there are evidences of self-accusings in your confession. "I'm sorry we
cut poor Jerry, wife! It wouldn't hurt us to speak to him!" You'll come
right again, man; we're sure of that. Mrs. Flin thinks it is well enough
to show Jerry that their position in life is different from what it used
to be, and she is afraid that if she condescends to notice him, even
casually, it will be an excuse for him to send Duggy up to play with
Sammy; and isn't she trying as hard as she can to make Sammy forgetful
of the past, and mindful only of their present exaltation! The Captain
acknowledges that it is a good idea to try to make something of Sammy,
but he feels as if he is himself rather too old to remodel into a
polished gentleman, after so long a probation of hardening and
roughening too. He considers it a real trial to sit by with his great
hands hanging by his side, while his wife talks to her grand
acquaintances with a volubility that he never before imagined her
possessed of; and he only misses still more the quid that used to keep
his own tongue occupied. It is such a relief when the last call is made,
and their steps are bent toward their own door. Mrs. Flin goes to her
room to divest herself of some of her superfluous finery, and her
husband quietly takes the opportunity to don his shaggy coat and light
his pipe, and while she fancies him safe within their own walls, he is
striding swiftly toward Jerry Doolan's to tell him what an old fool he
made of himself in the morning, and to remove the heaviness from his
friend's heart by an hour of familiar chat.
"Fact is, Jerry," says he, "wife may as well hang up her fiddle about
me; can't make a whistle out of a pig's tail, man, I tell ye! She may
fuss up the young'un as much as she's a mind to, but it'll be labor lost
over an old chap like me. I feel more at home down here in the old
place, and a plaguy sight more comfortable, than I do with all the nice
fixins she's got together up yonder; and I'll tell you what it is,
Jerry, we'll have many a smoke and talk yet, while the women folks do up
their callin'. I've been once, and that's once too many, and it will
take a taut pull to get me at that business again;" and the old sailor
puffed away at his pipe, and congratulated himself in his firm
resolution not to be whiffled about so easily as heretofore by his
wife's ambitious whims.
A pretty time there was of it, though, when he reached home again, and
Mrs. Flin pumped out of him where he had been. "It's all of no use,
Jerold Flin," said she, "for me to be a strivin' and a strivin' to keep
up the honor of the house, and you continually running back to your low
associates." But seeing that her husband was not much affected by any of
her appeals she turned her aspirations to the boy, whose life she almost
teased out with her injunctions not to do this, for James Airly didn't,
and to be sure to do that, because James Airly did. You need not exert
yourself, Mrs. Flin, the boy's a "chip off the old block," and you can
not make him otherwise. If you'll only try to implant within him good
principles, and teach him that kindness of heart that always results in
a true courtesy, it will benefit him more than all the fashionable
notions you can gather from the external example of your neighbor
Airly's children, I can assure you. This life is too noble and too
dignified to be frittered away in vain attempts after a worthless
outside. There is a genuine refinement and polish that comes from a
strict adherence to the golden rule; this is what I would have you
impress upon Master Sammy.