"But you ought to pardon both. It would be generous. It would be Christian."
I was sorry I had said that, for he looked contemptuously and said, "So they teach you. I call it weakness."
"Oh, Harry! dear Harry, no! The highest strength!"
"I don't understand that kind of talk," he said. "You don't know what that Smith is to my poor mother!"
"We won't talk of him; but, indeed, the Misses Stympson are grateful to you, and are sorry. Won't you go to them on Monday?"
"No! I don't like scandal-mongers."
"But you have quite conquered them."
"What do you mean? If we are the brutes they tell those who would have been our friends, we are not less so because I pulled a dog out of the river."
The hard look was on his face, and to my faint plea, "The poor dog!"
"The dog will do very well." He went decisively out of the way of further persuasions, and when a formal note of invitation arrived, he said Eustace and I might go, but he should not. He had something to do at the potteries; and as to the dog, the less it was meddled with the better.