Every Little Counts

Mr. William Reynolds arrived late, perhaps because he delayed too long
over the niceties of his toilet. He was a country young man, fashioned
upon a well-worn last. His occupation for several years past had been to
attend to the furnishing and driving of a milk-cart, and, very likely,
it was this which had hindered the proper development of his figure. At
all events, he was stoutest where it is generally thought advisable to
be lean, and narrow where popular prejudice demands breadth. His knees
were more conspicuous than his legs, and his elbows than his arms. His
face was striking, chiefly because an accident in early life had
prostrated his nose; the expression, though lacking force, was in the
main good-natured, the eyes were modestly veiled behind a pair of
eye-glasses, which stayed on, as it were, by accident.

Mr. Reynolds was an admirer of Cornelia's; a fact which was the occasion
of much pleasant remark and easy witticism. More serious consequences
were not likely to ensue, for such men as he seldom attain to be other
than indirectly useful or mildly obnoxious to their fellow-creatures.
But the strongest instincts he had were social; and it was touching to
observe the earnestness with which they urged him to lumber the path of
fashion and gay life. He nearly broke his own heart, and unseated his
instructor's reason, in his efforts to learn dancing; and, to secure
elegant apparel for Sundays and parties, he would forswear the butcher's
wagon for months at a time. Once in a while he would smoke an Havana
cigar from the assortment to be found at the grocery-store on the
corner, and sometimes, when a national holiday or the gloom of
unrequited love rendered strong measures a necessity, he would become
recklessly convivial over muddy whisky-and-water amid the spittoons and
colored prints of the hotel bar-room.