If he could have a
sister, he would want her to be like Marjorie. He was very much like
Marjorie himself, just as shy, just as sensitive, hardly more fitted to
take his own part, and I think Marjorie was the braver of the two. He was
slow-tempered and unforgiving; if a friend failed him once, he never took
him into confidence again. He was proud where Marjorie was humble. He
gave his services; she gave herself. He seldom quarrelled, but never was
the first to yield. They were both mixtures of reserve and frankness;
both speaking as often out of a shut heart as an open heart. But when
Marjorie could open her heart, oh, how she opened it! As for Hollis, I
think he had never opened his; demonstrative sympathy was equally the key
to the hearts of both.
But here I am analyzing them before they had learned they had any self to
analyze. But they existed, all the same.
Marjorie was a plain little body while Hollis was noticeably handsome
with eloquent brown eyes and hair with its golden, boyish beauty just
shading into brown; his sensitive, mobile lips were prettier than any
girl's, and there was no voice in school like his in tone or culture. Mr.
Holmes was an elocutionist and had taken great pains with Hollis Rheid's
voice. There was a courteous gentleness in his manner all his own; if
knighthood meant purity, goodness, truth and manliness, then Hollis Rheid
was a knightly school-boy. The youngest of five rough boys, with a stern,
narrow-minded father and a mother who loved her boys with all her heart
and yet for herself had no aims beyond kitchen and dairy, he had not
learned his refinement at home; I think he had not _learned_ it anywhere.
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