“It would be too ridiculous, too absurd,” said I, sick with anger.
“Not a bit; we are travelling with our old grandmother, we are making the tour of Europe, and keeping our journal. Every evening we compare notes of what we have seen. Pray do so; I 'm quite wild to try it.”
“Really,” said I, gravely, “it is a sort of trifling I should find it very difficult to descend to. I see no reason, besides, to associate the name of Potts with what you are pleased to call snobbery!”
“Could you help it? Could you, with all the best will in the world, make Potts a man of distinction? Would n't he, in spite of you, be low, vulgar, inquisitive, and obtrusive? Wouldn't you find him thrusting himself forward, twenty times a day, into positions he had no right to? Would n't the creature be a butt and a dupe—”
“Shall I own,” burst I in, “that it gives me no exalted idea of your taste, if I find that you select for ridicule a person on the mere showing that his name is a monosyllable? And, once for all, I repudiate all share in the scheme, and beg that I may not hear more of it.”
I turned away as I said this. She resumed her book, and we spoke no more to each other till we reached our halting-place for the night.
CHAPTER XVII. MRS. KEATS MOVES MY INDIGNATION
I am forced to the confession, Mrs. Keats was not what is popularly called an agreeable old lady. She spoke seldom, she smiled never, and she had a way of looking at you, a sort of cold astonishment, seeming to say, “How is this? explain yourself,” that kept me in a perpetual terror.
My morning's tiff with Miss Herbert had neither been condoned nor expiated when we sat down to dinner, as stiff a party of three as can well be imagined; scarcely a word was interchanged as we ate.