Mary, the youngest daughter, was a less promising subject. Her
precocity was of a very unpleasant order, and caused her father a great
deal of annoyance.
When everything else failed him, Sam had the baby for consolation. The
little wretch had been so utterly uncared for since its appearance that
it seemed surprised for some time by its father's demonstrations of
affection, but finally the meaning of this seemed made known to it,
probably in the way the same meanings are translated to babies
everywhere else, and from being a forlorn and fretful child it
gradually became so cheerful that its own mother began to display some
interest in it and make a plaything of it, to her own manifest
advantage.
But Jane, the elder daughter, who was a woman in stature and already
knew more of the world than is good for women in general, was a
constant source of anxiety to Sam. Many a night the unhappy father
lingered in the neighborhood of the hotel, seeking for an opportunity
to see his daughter and talk with her; not that he had much to say, but
that he hoped by his presence to keep more congenial company away from
her. When he heard any village gossip in the house, he always could
trace it to his daughter Jane. Whenever Mary broke out with some new
and wild expression of longing, he understood who put it into her mind.
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