He began to
take private lessons in dancing and singing, and as he possessed a
certain natural grace, invisible when he was out of humor, but always
appearing when he wanted to please, and a certain facility of imitation
as well, he was soon able to dance excellently, and sing with more or
less dullness a few songs of the sort fashionable at the time. But he
took so little delight in music or singing for its own sake that in any
allusion to his sister's practicing he would call it _an infernal
row_.
He was not a little astonished, was perhaps a little annoyed at the
impression made by his family in general, and Hester in particular, upon
one in whose judgment he had placed unquestioning confidence. Nor did he
conceal from Vavasor his dissent from his opinion of them, for he felt
that his friend's admiration gave him an advantage--not as member of
such a family, but as the pooh-pooher of what his friend admired. For
did not his superiority to the admiration to which his friend yielded,
stamp him in that one thing at least the superior of him who was his
superior in so many other things? To be able to look down where he
looked up--what was it but superiority?
"My mother's the best of the lot," he said: "--she's the best woman in
the world, I do believe; but she's nobody except at home--don't you
know? Look at her and your aunt together! Pooh! Because she's my mother,
that's no reason why I should think royalty of her!"
"What a cub it is!" said Vavasor to himself, almost using a worse
epithet of the same number of letters, and straightway read him a
lecture, well meant and shallow, on what was good form in a woman.
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