Sometimes, indeed, the sheep is by no means so black as to the whiter
ones he seems; perhaps neither are they so much whiter as their friends
and they themselves think; for to be altogether respectable is not to be
clean; and the black sheep may be all the better than some of the rest
that he looks what he is, and does not dye his wool. But on the other
hand he may be a great deal worse than some of his own family think him.
"Then," said Hester, after a longish pause, "those that need more to
make them happy, are less easily made unhappy?"
To this question rather than remark, she received no reply. Her father
and mother both felt it not altogether an easy one to answer: it
suggested points requiring consideration. To Cornelius, it was a mere
girl's speech, not worth heeding where the girl was his sister. He
turned up at it a mental nose, the merest of snubs; and well he might,
for he had not the least notion of what it meant or involved.
As little notion had his father that his son Cornelius was a black
sheep. He was not what the world would have called a black sheep, but
his father, could he have seen into him, would have counted him a very
black sheep indeed--and none the whiter that he recognized in the
blackness certain shades that were of paternal origin.
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