"What's the matter with the word? It is the most respectable old
Anglo-Saxon."

Hester said no more, but heaved an inward sigh. Of what consequence were
the words her brother used, so long as he recognized no dignity in life,
never set himself _to be!_ Why should any one be taught to behave
like a gentleman, so long as he is no gentleman?

Cornelius burst out laughing.

"To think of those muffs going through the river--sliding along the
bottom, and spreading out their feelers above the water, like two
rearing lobsters! And the angels waiting for them on the bank like
laundresses with their clean shirts! Ha! ha! ha!"

"They seemed to me," answered Hester, "very much like the men, and
angels too, in that old edition of the Pilgrim papa thinks so much of. I
couldn't for my part, absurd as they were, help feeling a certain pathos
in the figures and faces."

"That came of the fine interpretation the old--hm!--codger gave of their
actions and movements!"

"It may have come of the pitiful feeling the whole affair gave me--I
cannot tell," said Hester. "That old man made me very sad."

"Now you do strand me, Hester!" replied her brother. "How you could see
anything pathetic, or pitiful as you call it, in that disreputable old
humbug, I can't even imagine. A more ludicrous specimen of tumble-down
humanity it would be impossible to find! A drunken old thief--I'll lay