“But it doesn’t produce a pleasant surprise,” Madge objected.
“I beg your pardon! It has produced a pleasant surprise, as I can testify, for I have experienced it myself. What is your verdict, Mother?”
“My verdict is, that it’s a pity, as I always thought it was, that you are not to be a lawyer, and that Madge can’t do better than practise her drawing by making the allegorical sketch.”
That Mrs. Burtwell should be on Ned’s side was a foregone conclusion, and Madge appealed to her father.
“Father, is calling Eleanor Merritt a prize pig a form of wit?”
“Pretty poor wit I should call it!”
“Father is on my side!” shouted Ned. “He says it’s poor wit, which is only one way of saying that it is wit!”
“Can wit be poor?” asked Julia.
“Father says it can.”
“Then it isn’t wit!” Madge protested.