"They none of them know what they believe," said Roden; "nor do you or I. Men talk of belief as though it were a settled thing. It is so but with few; and that only with those who lack imagination. What sort of a time did you have down at Castle Hautboy?"
"Oh,—I don't know,—pretty well. Everybody was very kind, and my sister likes it. The scenery is lovely. You can look up a long reach of Ulleswater from the Castle terrace, and there is Helvellyn in the distance. The house was full of people,—who despised me more than I did them."
"Which is saying a great deal, perhaps."
"There were some uncommon apes. One young lady, not very young, asked me what I meant to do with all the land in the world when I took it away from everybody. I told her that when it was all divided equally there would be a nice little estate even for all the daughters, and that in such circumstances all the sons would certainly get married. She acknowledged that such a result would be excellent, but she did not believe in it. A world in which the men should want to marry was beyond her comprehension. I went out hunting one day."
"The hunting I should suppose was not very good."
"But for one drawback it would have been very good indeed."
"The mountains, I should have thought, would be one drawback, and the lakes another."
"Not at all. I liked the mountains because of their echoes, and the lakes did not come in our way."
"Where was the fault?"
"There came a man."