“Time valuable!” she exclaimed,—and as she stood up an artist might have taken her for a model of Minerva had she only held a spear in her hand. “And is no time valuable, do you think, but yours? I had, Sir, your distinct promise that the paper should be published if it was left in your hands above a week.”
“That is untrue, Madam.”
“Untrue, Sir?”
“Absolutely untrue.” Mrs. Brumby was undoubtedly a woman, and might be very like a goddess, but we were not going to allow her to palm off upon us without flat contradiction so absolute a falsehood as that. “We never dreamed of publishing your paper.”
“Then why, Sir, have you troubled yourself to read it,—from the beginning to the end?” We had certainly intimated that we had made ourselves acquainted with the entire essay, but we had in fact skimmed and skipped through about a third of it.
“How dare you say, Sir, you have never dreamed of publishing it, when you know that you studied it with that view?”
“We didn’t read it all,” we said, “but we read quite enough.”
“And yet but this moment ago you told me that you had perused it carefully.” The word peruse we certainly never used in our life. We object to “perusing,” as we do to “commencing” and “performing.” We “read,” and we “begin,” and we “do.” As to that assurance which the word “carefully” would intend to convey, we believe that we were to that extent guilty. “I think, Sir,” she continued, “that you had better see the lieutenant.”
“With a view to fighting the gentleman?” we asked.
“No, Sir. An officer in the Duke of Sussex’s Own draws his sword against no enemy so unworthy of his steel.” She had told me at a former interview that the lieutenant was so confirmed an invalid as to be barely able, on his best days, to drag himself out of bed. “One fights with one’s equal, but the law gives redress from injury, whether it be inflicted by equal, by superior, or by,—Inferior.” And Mrs. Brumby, as she uttered the last word, wagged her helmet at us in a manner which left no doubt as to the position which she assigned to us.