Chapter 2 - Page 2

shaken off and scattered abroad by any breeze that came along. Little
Elsie made playthings of everything, even of the grim Doctor, though
against his will, and though, moreover, there were tokens now and then
that the sight of this bright little creature was not a pleasure to
him, but, on the contrary, a positive pain; a pain, nevertheless,
indicating a profound interest, hardly less deep than though Elsie had
been his daughter.

Elsie did not play with the great spider, but she moved among the whole
brood of spiders as if she saw them not, and, being endowed with other
senses than those allied to these things, might coexist with them and
not be sensible of their presence. Yet the child, I suppose, had her
crying fits, and her pouting fits, and naughtiness enough to entitle
her to live on earth; at least crusty Hannah often said so, and often
made grievous complaint of disobedience, mischief, or breakage,
attributable to little Elsie; to which the grim Doctor seldom responded
by anything more intelligible than a puff of tobacco-smoke, and,
sometimes, an imprecation; which, however, hit crusty Hannah instead of
the child. Where the child got the tenderness that a child needs to
live upon, is a mystery to me; perhaps from some aged or dead mother,
or in her dreams; perhaps from some small modicum of it, such as boys
have, from the little boy; or perhaps it was from a Persian kitten,
which had grown to be a cat in her arms, and slept in her little bed,
and now assumed grave and protective airs towards her former playmate.
[Endnote: 2.]

The boy, [Endnote: 3] as we have said, was two or three years Elsie's
elder, and might now be about six years old. He was a healthy and
cheerful child, yet of a graver mood than the little girl, appearing to
lay a more forcible grasp on the circumstances about him, and to tread
with a heavier footstep on the solid earth; yet perhaps not more so
than was the necessary difference between a man-blossom, dimly
conscious of coming things, and a mere baby, with whom there was
neither past nor future. Ned, as he was named, was subject very early
to fits of musing, the subject of which--if they had any definite
subject, or were more than vague reveries--it was impossible to guess.
They were of those states of mind, probably, which are beyond the
sphere of human language, and would necessarily lose their essence in
the attempt to communicate or record them. The little girl, perhaps,
had some mode of sympathy with these unuttered thoughts or reveries,
which grown people had ceased to have; at all events, she early learned
to respect them, and, at other times as free and playful as her Persian
kitten, she never in such circumstances ventured on any greater freedom
than to