Presently, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she asked, “John, why do some of the stars twinkle and others do not?”
“How should I know? I suppose they were out on a spree when they ought to ha’ been in bed, and now can’t keep their eyes from winking.”
“Them’s the good stars, that keep regular hours, and go to bed when they ought. Your eyes’ll be winking no end to-morrow.”
“John, what becomes of the stars by day?”
“Kitty--Kate, don’t ask any more questions, or I shall jump overboard. I can’t bear it; I can’t indeed. It makes my head ache.”
Kate Quarm had never felt a mother’s love. She could not recall her mother, who had died when she was an infant. Her father, encumbered with a motherless babe, had handed the child over to his sister Zerah, a hard woman, who resented the infliction upon her in addition to the cares and solicitudes of her house. From her aunt Kate received no love. Her uncle paid to her no attention, save when he was provoked to rebuke by some noise made in childish play, or some damage done in childish levity.
Thus Kate had grown up to the verge of womanhood with all her affections buried in her bosom. That dark heart was like a cellar stored with flower bulbs and roots. They are not dead, they send forth bleached and sickly shoots without vigour and incapable of bloom. Hers was a tender, craving nature, one that hungered for love; and as she received none, wherever she turned, to whomsoever she looked, she had become self-contained, reserved, and silent. Her aunt thought her sullen and obstinate.
As already related, Mrs. Pepperill had not been always childless. She had possessed a daughter, Wilmot, who had been the joy and pride of her heart. Wilmot had been a bright, merry girl, with fair hair and forget-me-not blue eyes, and cheeks in which the lily was commingled with the rose. Wilmot was a born coax and coquette; she cajoled her mother to give her what she desired, and she flattered her father into humouring her caprices.
Naturally, the reserved, pale Kate was thrown into shadow by the forward, glowing Wilmot; and the parents daily contrasted their own child with that of the brother, and always to the disadvantage of the latter.
Wilmot had a mischievous spirit, and delighted in teasing and tyrannising over her cousin. Malevolent she was not, but inconsiderate; she was spoiled, and, as a spoiled child, capricious and domineering. She liked--in her fashion, loved--Kate, as she liked and loved a plaything, that she might trifle with and knock about; not as a playfellow, to be considered and conciliated. Association with Wilmot hardly in any degree brightened the existence of Kate; it rather served to cloud it. Petty wrongs, continuous setting back, repeated slights, wounded and crushed a naturally expansive and susceptible nature. Kate hardly ventured to appeal to her father or to her aunt against her cousin, even when that cousin’s treatment was most unjust and insupportable; the aunt naturally sided with her own child, and the father heedlessly laughed at Kate’s troubles as undeserving of consideration.