Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/283

 bravely and cheerily, in the light of day. The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated, so thrust in and out of its niche, so passed from hand to hand, so dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by this time much of its early freshness and seemed a rather battered and disfeatured divinity. But it was still brought forth in moments of trouble, to have its tinselled petticoat twisted about and be set up on its altar. Rowland observed that Mrs. Light had at the service of her tawdry ideal a conscience that worked in the most approved and most punctual fashion; she considered that she had been performing a pious duty in bringing up Christina to carry herself, "marked" very high and in the largest letters, to market; and when the future looked dark she found consolation in thinking that destiny could never have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person. It made almost as much and as comically for the topsy-turvy as if he had seen the good stout lady herself stand on her head.

"I don't know whether you believe in presentiments," said Mrs. Light, "and I don't mind if you think they 're rubbish. I 've had one for the last fifteen years, and if people have often laughed at it they 've never laughed me out of it. It has been everything to me; I could n't have lived without it. One must believe in something, hang it! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old. I remember the day and the place as if it were yesterday. She was a very ugly baby—I give you that for a remarkable fact; for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at her, and I used to spoil my own looks with 249