"It is very good of you, dear Miss Dallicot, to take so friendly an interest in all of us; and your kind sympathy is fully appreciated. Father was saying only yesterday that he counts you among his truest, as well as his cleverest, friends; for he has never been disappointed either in your heart or your head. You know how he enjoys a chat about books with you, and how much good it does him."
"Your words, thus fitly spoken, are indeed as apples of gold in pictures of silver. The praise of so gifted a man as your father is too high a tribute to such feeble powers as I may possess; yet the suffrage of one who combines the noble qualities of a true gentleman with the high vocation of a minister of religion, is an encouragement to any thoughtful mind to follow his guidance into the realms of knowledge."
Now Joanna detested gossip above all things, having already learnt that no good can come of it, but much evil: so she wisely endeavoured to drive her hostess still further into the realms of knowledge, so as to keep her from inquisitively wandering into the fields of romance.
"Have you been reading anything new lately?" she asked with much subtlety.
"Nay, my dear Joanna, new books and new writers are alike abhorrent to my literary taste; and I dislike the one as cordially as I despise the other. To me my Plato and my Aristotle are ever fresh; and if I desire to provide my mind with suitable relaxation, are not Walter Scott and Jane Austen ever at hand to plume my wings for a flight into the world of fiction?"
"But don't you think that novels of all kinds—provided of course that they are good ones—help one to understand human nature?"
"You must first prove to me that a fuller understanding of human nature is a 'consummation devoutly to be wished'; for my own part I cannot see that it forms a specially interesting or instructive branch of study. That human nature is in but a sorry condition at present, is my conviction: that it will some day rise to a height unmeasured as yet, is my hope; but to watch it in its dilatory and intermittent ascent—to count its countless failures and to number its innumerable falls—is a pastime which does not recommend itself to my intelligence, nor render itself attractive to my fancy."
"Yet human nature is the most interesting thing and the most important thing in the whole world—except divine nature."
"To me, my dear Joanna, too lively an interest in the thoughts and emotions of one's fellow-creatures betokens a somewhat frivolous and unstable mind; and would be in danger of gradually degenerating into a gossiping habit, not becoming nor seemly in a professor of the Christian religion."
Joanna looked thoughtful. "Edgar Ford says that Alice and I talk and think too much about feelings," she said; "and that it is morbid and unhealthy of us."