"In Mill's book on liberty."
"It is not in my library."
"I borrowed it from Mr. Hammond."
"Strange that a plant so noxious should be permitted in such a sanctified atmosphere! Do you happen to recollect the following sentences? 'I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions!' 'There is a Greek ideal of self-development which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government blends with but does not supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than either.'"
"Yes, sir. They occur in the same book; but, Mr. Murray, I have been advised by my teacher to bear always in mind that noble maxim, 'I can tolerate every thing else but every other man's intolerance'; and it is with his consent and by his instructions that I go like Ruth, gleaning in the great fields of literature." "Take care you don't find Boaz instead of barley. After all, the universal mania for match-making schemes and manoeuvers which continually stir society from its dregs to the painted foam-bubble dancing on its crested wave, is peculiar to no age or condition, but is an immemorial and hereditary female proclivity; for I defy Paris or London to furnish a more perfectly developed specimen of a 'manoeuvring mamma' than was crafty Naomi, when she sent that pretty little Moabitish widow out husband-hunting."
"I heartily wish she was only here to outwit you!" laughed his cousin, nestling her head against his arm as they sat together on the sofa.
"Who? The widow or the match-maker?"
"Oh! the match-maker, of course. There is more than one Ruth already in the field."
The last clause was whispered so low that only St. Elmo heard it, and any other woman but Estelle Harding would have shrunk away in utter humiliation from the eye and the voice that answered:
"Yourself and Mrs. Powell! Eat Boaz's barley as long as you like—nay, divide Boaz's broad fields between you; and you love your lives, keep out of Boaz's way."