ossible of the wound he had given to the little loving
heart that was silently brooding under her grandfather's
butternut-colored sea-coat. Not only was he ignorant, but he had not
even those conditions within himself which made knowledge possible. All
that there was developed of him, at present, was a fund of energy,
self-esteem, hope, courage, and daring, the love of action, life, and
adventure; his life was in the outward and present, not in the inward
and reflective; he was a true ten-year old boy, in its healthiest and
most animal perfection. What she was, the small pearl with the golden
hair, with her frail and high-strung organization, her sensitive nerves,
her half-spiritual fibres, her ponderings, and marvels, and dreams, her
power of love, and yearning for self-devotion, our readers may, perhaps,
have seen. But if ever two children, or two grown people, thus
organized, are thrown into intimate relations, it follows, from the very
laws of their being, that one must hurt the other, simply by being
itself; one must always hunger for what the other has not to give.

It was a merry meal, however, when they all sat down to the tea-table
once more, and Mara by her grandfather's side, who often stopped what he
was saying to stroke her head fondly. Moses bore a more prominent part
in the conversation than he had been wont to do before this voyage, and
all seemed to listen to him with a kind of indulgence elders often
accord to a handsome, manly boy, in the first flush of some successful
enterprise. That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future,
which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in
experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.

Gradually, little Mara quieted herself with listening to and admiring
him. It is not comfortable to have any heart-quarrel with one's
cherished idol, and everything of the feminine nature, therefore, can
speedily find fifty good reasons for seeing one's self in the wrong and
one's graven image in the right; and little Mara soon had said to
herself, without words, that, of course, Moses couldn't be expected to
think as much of her as she of him. He was handsomer, cleverer, and had
a thousand other things to do and to think of--he was a boy, in short,
and going to be a glorious man and sail all over the world, while she
could only hem handkerchiefs and knit stockings, and sit at home and
wait for him to come back. This was about the _resume_ of life a