The Elect Lady | Page 9

and little
more, her religion toward God amounted. But she had a strong sense of
obligation to do what was right.
Her father gave her so little money to spend that she had to be very
careful with her housekeeping, and they lived in the humblest way. For
her person she troubled him as little as she could, believing him, from
the half statements and hints he gave, and his general carriage toward
life, not a little oppressed by lack of money, nor suspecting his
necessities created and his difficulties induced by himself. In this
regard it had come to be understood between them that the produce of
the poultry-yard was Alexa's own; and to some little store she had thus
gathered she mainly trusted for the requirements of her invalid. To this
her father could not object, though he did not like it; he felt what was
hers to be his more than he felt what was his to be hers.

Alexa had not learned to place value on money beyond its use, but she
was not therefore free from the service of Mammon; she looked to it as
to a power essential, not derived; she did not see it as God's creation,
but merely as an existence, thus making of a creature of God the
mammon of unrighteousness. She did not, however, cling to it, but was
ready to spend it. At the same time, had George Crawford looked less
handsome or less of a gentleman, she would not have been so ready to
devote the contents of her little secret drawer.
The discovery of her relationship to the young man waked a new
feeling. She had never had a brother, never known a cousin, and had
avoided the approach of such young men as, of inferior position in her
eyes, had sought to be friendly with her; here was one thrown helpless
on her care, with necessities enough to fill the gap between his real
relation to her, and that of the brother after whom she had sighed in
vain! It was a new and delightful sensation to have a family claim on a
young man--a claim, the material advantage of which was all on his
side, the devotion all on hers. She was invaded by a flood of tenderness
toward the man. Was he not her cousin, a gentleman, and helpless as
any new-born child? Nothing should be wanting that a strong woman
could do for a powerless man.

CHAPTER VII.
THE COUSINS.
George Crawford was in excellent health when the accident occurred,
and so when he began to recover, his restoration was rapid. The process,
however, was still long enough to compel the cousins to know more of
each other than twelve months of ordinary circumstance would have
made possible.
George, feeling neither the need, nor, therefore, the joy of the new
relationship so much as Alexa, disappointed her by the coolness of his
response to her communication of the fact; and as they were both
formal, that is, less careful as to the reasonable than as to the

conventional, they were not very ready to fall in love. Such people may
learn all about each other, and not come near enough for love to be
possible between them. Some people approximate at once, and at once
decline to love, remaining friends the rest of their lives. Others love at
once; and some take a whole married life to come near enough, and at
last love. But the reactions of need and ministration can hardly fail to
breed tenderness, and disclose the best points of character.
The cousins were both handsome, and--which was of more
consequence--each thought the other handsome. They found their
religious opinions closely coincident--nor any wonder, for they had
gone for years to the same church every Sunday, had been regularly
pumped upon from the same reservoir, and had drunk the same
arguments concerning things true and untrue.
George found that Alexa had plenty of brains, a cultivated judgment,
and some knowledge of literature; that there was no branch of science
with which she had not some little acquaintance, in which she did not
take some small interest. Her father's teaching was beyond any he could
have procured for her, and what he taught she had learned; for she had
a love of knowing, a tendency to growth, a capacity for seizing real
points, though as yet perceiving next to nothing of their relation to
human life and hope. She believed herself a judge of verse, but in truth
her knowledge of poetry was limited to its outer forms, of which she
had made good studies with her father. She had learned the how before
the what, knew the body before the soul--could tell good binding but
not bad leather--in a word, knew