“But I came to intrude my own troubles on you.”
“All the better. That will help me forget mine.”
Mrs. Little seated herself, and, after a slight hesitation, opened her battery thus:—“Well, my good friend, I am come to ask you a favor. It is to try and reconcile my brother and me. If any one can do it, you can.”
“Praise the method, not the man. If one could only persuade you to put yourself in his place, and him to put himself in yours, you would be both reconciled in five minutes.”
“You forget we have been estranged this five-and-twenty years.”
“No I don't. The only question is, whether you can and will deviate from the practice of the world into an obese lunatic's system, both of you.”
“Try ME, to begin.”
The doctor's eyes sparkled with satisfaction. “Well, then,” said he, “first you must recollect all the differences you have seen between the male and female mind, and imagine yourself a man.”
“Oh, dear! that is so hard. But I have studied Henry. Well, there—I have unsexed myself—in imagination.”
“You are not only a man but a single-minded man, with a high and clear sense of obligation. You are a trustee, bound by honor to protect the interests of a certain woman and a certain child. The lady, under influence, wishes to borrow her son's money, and risk it on rotten security. You decline, and the lady's husband affronts you. In spite of that affront, being a high-minded man not to be warped by petty irritation, you hurry to your lawyers to get two thousand pounds of your own, for the man who had affronted you.”