The speaker tried not to smile, but continued to look so guilty and red-faced that Irving’s laughter grew.
“After all these years; the heart that I thought was mine—given to a heaver!”
“I’d like to have said good-by to her,” said Betsy. “She’s—she ain’t the—the independent kind—and I—”
Irving looked at her kindly. “How does that big heart of yours find room in that slender body?” he asked. “Cats and dogs and horses and humans—it’s all one to you. You’ve taken a brief to defend them all.”
“Oh, Mr. Irving!”—Betsy looked off at the landscape,—“if I could defend them all!”
“Why that tragic look?”
“Your words made me think again, as I so often do, that in a world full of so much beauty as this, people are cuttin’ up live animals in the name of science, and the law permits it.”
Irving shook his head. He had heard before Betsy’s horror-stricken views of vivisection.
“Human life is the most precious of all,” he reminded her, now.
“Yes, but don’t just as fine physicians as any say that the unnatural conditions in vivisection prevent any good coming from it? Yes, they do; and supposing it did do any good! Don’t most civilized people believe in an after-life? If they’re going to live to eternity anyway, and have got to pass through death some time, how can they be willing to have their lives in this world prolonged a few years at the cost of torturing innocent animals? That’s what I say. How can they—and then expect any heaven awaits them?”