"
With such a lineage he might have done better, people said,
than to marry that girl, who was the most fickle creature
and no housekeeper, and whose people--this they told one another
in reserved voices--were PLAY-ACTORS! Athalia's mother, who had
been the "play-actor," had left her children an example of duty--
domestic as well as professional duty--faithfully done.
As she did not leave anything else, Athalia added nothing
to the Hall fortune; but Lewis's law practice, which was
hardly more than conveyancing now and then, was helped out
by a sawmill which the Halls had owned for two generations.
So, as things were, they were able to live in humdrum prosperity
which gave Lewis plenty of time to browse about among his
grandfather's old theological books, and by-and-by to become
a very sound Hebrew scholar, and spared Athalia much wholesome
occupation which would have been steadying to her eager nature.
She was one of those people who express every passing emotion,
as a flower expresses each wind that sways it upon its stalk.
But with expression the emotion ended.
"But she isn't fickle," Lewis had defended her once to a privileged
relation who had made the accusation, basing it on the fact that Athalia
had sewed her fingers off for the Missionary Society one winter and done
nothing the next--"Athalia ISN'T fickle," Lewis explained; "fickle people
are insincere. Athalia is perfectly sincere, but she is temporary;
that's all.
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