His uncle’s sarcasm never affected Charlie’s temper.
“I’ll turn him on to you, uncle,” he replied, “and you can see how you like it.”
“I’ll go and call on him tomorrow. You’d better come too, Charlie.”
“And then you can see the ladies from London,” added Mrs. Marland. “Perhaps the one who isn’t young Mr. Prime’s will be interesting.”
“Or,” said Charlie, “as mostly happens in this woeful world, the one who is.”
“I think the less we see of that sort of person at all, the better,” observed Lady Merceron, with gentle decision. “They can hardly be quite what we’re accustomed to.”
“That sort of person!”
Charlie went to bed with the phrase ringing in his horror-struck ears. If to be the most beautiful, the most charming, and the most refined, the daintiest, the wittiest and prettiest, the kindest and the sweetest, the merriest and most provoking creature in the whole world—if to be all this were yet not to weigh against being ‘that sort of person’—if it were not, indeed, to outweigh, banish, and obliterate everything else why, the world was not fit to live in, and he no true Merceron! For the Merceron men had always pleased themselves.