“Yes,” she said, at last. “Dorothea, you can send Caesar with a note.”
“Oh, thank you, Grandmamma!” cried I.
Grandmamma looked at me, and gave an odd little laugh.
“These fresh girls!” she said, “how they do care about things, to be sure!”
“Grandmamma, is it pleasanter not to care about things?” said I.
“It is better, my dear. To be at all warm or enthusiastic betrays under-breeding.”
“But—please, Grandmamma—do not well-bred people get very warm over politics?”
“Sometimes well-bred people forget themselves,” said Grandmamma, “But it is more allowable to be warm over some matters than others. Politics are to some degree an exception. We do not make exhibitions of our personal affections, Caroline, and above all things we avoid showing warmth on religious questions. We do not talk of such things at all in good society.”
Now—I say this to my book, of course, not to Grandmamma—is not that very strange? We are not to be warm over the most important things, matters of life and death, things we really care about in our inmost hearts: but over all the little affairs that we do not care about, we may lose our tempers a little (in an elegant and reasonable way) if we choose to do so. Would it not be better the other way about?