"What a request!" said Julia; "Miss Morton might go on all day, and she would not be able to answer it. You have not been taught to ask questions, that is quite clear."
Poor Amy looked confused, and said, timidly, that she thought she had expressed herself badly.
"I know what you mean, though," replied Miss Morton, who had of late ventured more openly to express her opinions, especially when called forth by Amy; "I don't think anything vulgar in itself, but only when it is not befitting the rank and station of the person concerned."
Miss Cunningham opened her eyes widely, and looked as if she would willingly have understood; and Amy begged Miss Morton to explain herself more clearly.
"Conjuring tricks," she asked, "are they vulgar?"
Miss Morton smiled. "I hope," she said, "you are not growing too proud to be amused; why should such a notion enter your head?"
"Miss Cunningham thinks them so," replied Amy.
"If Miss Cunningham were to exhibit them herself to any people that might choose to come and look at them," answered Miss Morton, "I should have reason to think her vulgar; but the poor conjurer is a common person who gains his livelihood by his ingenuity. There can be nothing more vulgar in his exhibition of tricks (if they are proper ones, I mean), than in a carpenter's making a table, or a tailor's making a coat."
"Really," exclaimed Miss Cunningham, "you have most extraordinary ideas. I exhibit conjuring tricks, indeed? I wonder how the notion could ever have entered your head."
"It is strange," said Julia Stanley, quietly: "conjurers are generally clever."