“Oh, Mr. Cutbill, you could n't possibly—”
“Could n't I, though? And don't I know well that I am Just as vain of my little talents—as your friend, Miss Julia, called them—as you and others are ready to ridicule them; but the real difference between us after all is this: You think the world at large is a monstrous clever creature, with great acuteness, great discrimination, and great delicacy; and I know it to be a great overgrown bully, mistaking half it hears, and blundering all it says, so that any one, I don't care who he is, that will stand out from the crowd in life, think his own thoughts and guide his own actions, may just do what he pleases with that unwieldy old monster, making it believe it's the master, all the while it is a mere slave and a drudge. There's another shrug of the shoulders. Why not say it out—you're a puppy, Tom Cutbill?”
“First of all it would n't be polite, and secondly—”
“Never mind the secondly. It's quite enough for me to see that I have not convinced you, nor am I half as clever a fellow as I think myself; and do you know, you 're the first I ever knew dispute the position.”
“But I do not. I subscribe to it implicitly; my presence here, at this moment, attests how I believe it. It is exactly because I regard Mr. Cutbill as the cleverest person I know—the very ablest to extricate one from a difficulty—that I have come to him this morning.”
“My honor is satisfied!” said he, laying his hand on his heart, and bowing with a grand seriousness.
“And now,” said Nelly, hurriedly, for her patience had wellnigh given in, “what's to be done? I have a project of my own, but I don't know whether you would agree to it.”
“Not agree to a project of yours! What do you take me for, Miss Ellen?”
“My dear Mr. Cutbill, I have exhausted all my compliments. I can only say I indorse all the preceding with compound interest.”
Slightly piqued by the half sarcasm of her manner, he simply said—“And your project; what is it?”