and niece with the old man, that she might hurry to Pentyre Glaze and provide what was needed for Coppinger. She took no leave of Judith. In the haze of apprehension that enveloped her mind glowed anger against the girl for having increased her difficulties and jeopardized her position with Coppinger.
Mr. Zachary Menaida was an old man, or rather a man who had passed middle age, with grizzled hair that stood up above his brow, projecting like the beak of a ship or the horn of an unicorn. He had a big nose inclined to redness, and kindly, watery eyes, was close shaven, and had lips that, whenever he was in perplexity, or worried with work or thought, he thrust forward and curled. He was a middle-statured man, inclined to stoop.
Uncle Zachie, as he was commonly called behind his back, was a gentleman by birth. In the Roman Catholic Church there is a religious order called that of Minims. In England we have, perhaps, the most widely-diffused of orders, not confined to religion—it is that of Crotchets. To this order Mr. Menaida certainly belonged. He was made up of hobbies and prejudices that might bore, but never hurt others.
Probably the most difficult achievement one can conceive for a man to execute is to stand in his own light; yet Mr. Menaida had succeeded in doing this all through his life. In the first place, he had been bred up for the law, but had never applied himself to the duties of the profession to which he had been articled. As he had manifested as a boy a love of music, his mother and sister had endeavored to make him learn to play on an instrument; but, because so urged, he had refused to qualify himself to play on pianoforte, violin, or flute, till his fingers had stiffened, whereupon he set to work zealously to practise, when it was no longer possible for him to acquire even tolerable proficiency.
As he had been set by his father to work on skins of parchment, he turned his mind to skins of another sort, and became an eager naturalist and taxidermist.
That he had genius, or rather a few scattered sparks of talent in his muddled brain, was certain. Every one who knew him said he was clever, but pitied his inability to turn his cleverness to purpose. But one must take into consideration, before accepting the general verdict
