She hoard such fooleries? She have Mrs. Pugh's duplicates? No wonder she coldly answered, 'My little sister has been slightly infected, thank you, but I do not care for such things.'
'Indeed! Well, I always preserve as many as I can, as passports to a lady's favour.'
'That depends on how much sense the lady has,' said Averil, trusting that this was a spirited set down.
'You do not consider. Philosophically treated, they become a perfect school in historical heraldry, nay, in languages, in mathematical drawing, in illumination, said Tom, looking across to the album in which Mrs. Pugh's collection was enshrined, each device appropriately framed in bright colours. His gravity was intolerable. Was this mockery or not? However, as answer she must, she said,
'A very poor purpose for which to learn such things, and a poor way of learning them.'
'True,' said Tom, 'one pastime is as good as another; and the less it pretends to, the better. On the whole, it may be a beneficial outlet for the revival of illumination.'
Did this intolerable person know that there was an 'illuminator's guide' at home, and a great deal of red, blue, and gold paint, with grand designs for the ornamentation of Bankside chapel? Whether he knew it or not, she could not help answering, 'Illumination is desecrated by being used on such subjects.'
'And is not that better than the subjects being desecrated by illumination?'
Mrs. Pugh came to insist on that 'sweet thing of Mendelssohn's' from her dear Miss Ward; and Averil obeyed, not so glad to escape as inflamed by vexation at being prevented from fighting it out, and learning what he really meant; though she was so far used to the slippery nature of his arguments as to know that it was highly improbable that she should get at anything in earnest.
'If his sisters were silly, I should not mind,' said she to Leonard; 'then he might hold all women cheap from knowing no better; but when they like sensible things, why is every one else to be treated like an ape?'