‘Being sat upon is hardly the best lesson in humility,’ said Harry.
‘There’s apt to be a reaction,’ said Mr. Underwood; ‘but the crack voice of a country choir is not often in that condition, as I know too well. I was the veriest young prig myself under those circumstances!’
‘Don’t be too hard on cockiness,’ said Lord Rotherwood, who had come up to them, ‘there must be consciousness of powers. How are you to fly, if you mustn’t flap your wings and crow a little?’
‘On a les defauts de ses qualites,’ put in Lady Merrifield.
‘Yes,’ added Mr. Underwood. ‘It is quite true that needful self-assertion and originality, and sense of the evils around—’
‘Which the old folk have outgrown and got used to,’ said Lord Rotherwood.
‘May be condemned as conceit,’ concluded Mr. Underwood.
‘Ay, exactly as Eliab knew David’s pride and the naughtiness of his heart,’ said Lord Rotherwood. ‘If you won’t fight your giant yourself, you’ve no business to condemn those who feel it in them to go at him.’
‘Ah! we have got to the condemnation of others, instead of the exaltation of self,’ said Lady Merrifield.
‘It is better to cultivate humility in one’s self than other people, eh?’ said the Marquis, and his cousin thought, though she did not say, that he was really the most humble and unself-conscious man she had ever known. What she did say was, ‘It is a plant that grows best uncultivated.’