noon
How could it care for a fellow 's happiness , or even for his leading a correct life ! Would he not be a much better man if allowed to have Hester ! -- whereas in all probability she would fall to the lot of some quill-driver like her father -- a man that made a livelihood by drumming his notions into the ears of people that did not care a brass farthing about them ! -- Thus would Vavasor 's love-fits work themselves off -- declining from cold noon to a drizzly mephitic twilight . It was not soon that he risked an attempt to please her with a song of his own . There was just enough unconscious truth in him to make him a little afraid of Hester . Commonplace as were in the most thorough sense the channels in which his thoughts ran , he would not for less than a fortune have risked encountering her scorn .