uncomfortable, and
unlike any one else; and though she had certainly behaved admirably to
little Fina, so far as they could see, yet it was not quite out of the
nature of things that she should wish to get rid of the child, who,
after all, was the child of no one knows whom, and very likely spoilt
and tiresome enough.

But no one said this aloud. They only whispered it to each other,
their comments making no more noise than the gliding of snakes through
the evening grass.

As for Fina, she suffered mainly from a fit of indigestion consequent
on the shower of sweetmeats which fell on her from all hands as the
best consolation for her willful little ducking known to sane men and
women presumably acquainted with the elements of physiology. She was
made restless, too, from excitement by reason of the multiplicity of
toys which every one thought it incumbent on him and her to bestow;
for it was quite a matter for public rejoicing that she had not been
drowned, and Josephine, as her reputed savior, leapt at a bound to the
highest pinnacle of popular favor.

It made not the slightest difference in the estimation of these clumsy
thinkers that the thing for which Josephine was praised was a pure
fiction, just as the thing for which Leam was condemned was a pure
fiction. Society at North Aston had the need of hero-worship on it at
this moment, and a mythic heroine did quite as well for the occasion
as a real one.

No one was so lavish of her praise as Adelaide. It was really
delightful to note the generosity with which she eulogized her friend
Joseph, and the pleasure that she had in dwelling on her heroism;
Josephine deprecating her praises in that weak, conscious, and
blushing way which seems to accept while disclaiming.

She invariably said, "No, Adelaide, I do not deserve the credit of it:
it was Leam who saved the child;" but she said it in that voice and
manner which every one takes to mean more modesty than truth, and
which therefore no one believes as it is given; the upshot being that
it simply brings additional grist to the mill whence popularity is
ground out.

Her disclaimers were put down to her good-natured desire to screen
Leam: she had always been good to that extraordinary young person,
they said. But then Josephine Harrowby was good to every one, and if
she had a fault it was the generalized character of her benevolence,
which made her praise of no value, you see, because she praised every
one alike, an