CHAPTER XXXII.

PALMAM QUI NON MERUIT.

All North Aston rang with the story of little Fina’s peril, Josephine’s admirable devotion and Leam’s shameful neglect—­so shameful as to be almost criminal.  It was the apportionment of judgment usual with the world.  The one who had incurred no kind of risk, and had done only what was pleasant to her, received unbounded praise, while the one who was of practical use got for her personal peril and discomfort universal blame.  They said she had allowed the child to run into danger by her own carelessness, and then had done nothing to save her:  and they wondered beneath their breath if she had really wished the little one to be drowned.  She was an odd girl, you know, they whispered from each to each—­moody, uncomfortable, and unlike any one else; and though she had certainly behaved admirably to little Fina, so far as they could see, yet it was not quite out of the nature of things that she should wish to get rid of the child, who, after all, was the child of no one knows whom, and very likely spoilt and tiresome enough.

But no one said this aloud.  They only whispered it to each other, their comments making no more noise than the gliding of snakes through the evening grass.

As for Fina, she suffered mainly from a fit of indigestion consequent on the shower of sweetmeats which fell on her from all hands as the best consolation for her willful little ducking known to sane men and women presumably acquainted with the elements of physiology.  She was made restless, too, from excitement by reason of the multiplicity of toys which every one thought it incumbent on him and her to bestow; for it was quite a matter for public rejoicing that she had not been drowned, and Josephine, as her reputed savior, leapt at a bound to the highest pinnacle of popular favor.

It made not the slightest difference in the estimation of these clumsy thinkers that the thing for which Josephine was praised was a pure fiction, just as the thing for which Leam was condemned was a pure fiction.  Society at North Aston had the need of hero-worship on it at this moment, and a mythic heroine did quite as well for the occasion as a real one.

No one was so lavish of her praise as Adelaide.  It was really delightful to note the generosity with which she eulogized her friend Joseph, and the pleasure that she had in dwelling on her heroism; Josephine deprecating her praises in that weak, conscious, and blushing way which seems to accept while disclaiming.

She invariably said, “No, Adelaide, I do not deserve the credit of it:  it was Leam who saved the child;” but she said it in that voice and manner which every one takes to mean more modesty than truth, and which therefore no one believes as it is given; the upshot being that it simply brings additional grist to the mill whence popularity is ground out.