Sophy turned to her father, and with an odd dubious look, asked him, ‘Is be teasing me?’
‘He’d be proud to have the honour,’ Ulick made answer, so that Mr. Kendal’s smile grew broad. It was the funniest thing to see Ulick sporting with Sophy’s gravity, constraining her to playfulness, with something of the compulsion exercised by a large frolicsome puppy upon a sober old dog of less size and strength.
‘I do not like to see powers wasted on paradox,’ she said, even as the grave senior might roll up his lip and snarl.
‘I’m in earnest, Sophy,’ pursued Ulick, changing his note to eagerness. ‘La grande nation herself finds that logic was her bane. Consistency was never made for man! Why where would this world be if it did not go two ways at once?’
Sophy did laugh at this Irish version of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, but she held out. ‘The earth describes a circle; I like straight lines.’
‘Much we shall have of the right direction, unless we are content to turn right about face,’ said Ulick. ‘The best path of life is but a herring-bone pattern.’
‘What does he know of herring-boning?’ asked Mrs. Kendal, coming in at the moment, with a white cashmere cloak folded picturesquely over her delicate blue silk. Ulick in a moment assumed a less careless attitude, as he answered—
‘I found my poetical illustration on the motion of the earth too much for her, so I descended to the herring-bone as more suited to her capacity.’
‘There he is, mamma,’ said Sophy, ‘pleading that consistency is the most ruinous thing in the world.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Albinia. ‘Prometheus and his kin do most abound when Ulick’s head is worst, and papa is in greatest danger of being late.’