“Well, I know just a little about most things,” she said, “so perhaps I am not altogether such a charming creature as I appear to be.”
“On the contrary, I find you much more—” And then I stopped. The word “charming” did not suit her, and I could find no other.
“You are at a loss for a word already,” she interposed lightly. “Let us put our heads together, Sunbeam, and think of a word to describe us both, but it sha’n’t be ‘sympathetic,’ for that would make us pale and interesting at once.”
“But,” I ventured, “sympathy is reckoned a great thing on the earth just now.”
“You don’t know,” she rejoined, shaking her head. “You haven’t been there for some time, and fashions alter quickly. For aught you know, Tact may be dead, and she is the mother of Sympathy, and orphans rarely thrive in your world.”
“You speak rather disrespectfully of both of them,” said I.
She looked across at me with a curious mixture of amusement and seriousness.
“Well, my husband tells me about them sometimes, and I generally go by what he says, for he states plain facts.”
“He is not prejudiced?”
She shook her head. “It would not do for us to be prejudiced,” she corrected. “It is a failing of mortals, not of spirits. And, even reckoned by the world’s standpoint, we should lose more by it than even you do.”