“I don’t know, sir, what you mean by a mask,” said Mr Brown with some apparent heat. “It was quoted to illustrate a very genuine sentiment. If you had said a bait, I might have admitted the impeachment.”
“A bait, then,” said Gilead—“and a sweet one.”
“I am indebted to you for the term, Mr Balm,” said the gentleman, with a certain dry dignity; “but I can hold it hardly applicable to a personality endowed with such supreme gifts of force and intelligence. I would as soon call the Mother of the Gracchi sweet, sir, for my part.”
Gilead felt himself at a loss for words. Could it be possible that the little girl so contradicted her appearance as to be an infant phenomenon of an advanced type?
“Well, sir,” he said, utterly at sea—“a bait of whatever nature you please. In any case, I am to understand, its purpose was to find someone who would be willing to take this discarded pet off your hands?”
Mr Brown rose from his chair.
“Sir—Mr Balm!” he exclaimed.
“To secure a kind home for it,” explained Gilead, “whether because it is old, or because it bites, or—”
Mr Brown seized up a heavy paper-weight, poised it an instant furiously, and replaced it on the desk calmly.
“I think, I am sure,” he said, “that there must be some mistake.”