“The same way as any first-class stock degenerates—by marrying beneath them. Now the matrimonial alliances among the beasts on that farm would make any matchmaking mother weep. There’s not one in the family that did not make a mesalliance at some time of her life. And your grandfather was so careful in this respect. If you have any respect for his memory you will get rid of the lot.”
He was greatly interested in her revelations, and said so, adding,
“What a juggins you must all think me! But I suppose that was because you worked on the same principle as Adam did when he was asked to give the fox a name. ‘I’ll call it a fox,’ said he, ‘and a better name you’ll not get for it, because it’s a fox, if I know anything about animals.’ You couldn’t find a better name for me than a juggins, because I am one.”
“That’s nonsense,” she said. “There’s nothing of the juggins about you if I know what a juggins is. If you were one would you be talking here to me on the most important topics that an owner of property can talk about, when you might be criticizing some of the play at the nets? And if I thought you a juggins would I talk to you for five minutes—for one single minute? I’m mistress of myself. I’m independent of the opinion of any of the people here. I see no reason to be bored for the sake of being polite. I told you the last time we met just what I thought of you, and since then I’ve thought more on precisely the same lines. Of course I feel flattered at your listening to all that I have to say; but I’m not so eager for flattery that I should bother myself talking to you for the pure joy of seeing you listen to me with one ear while I knew that all the time everything I said was trickling out by the other. Now the next word you say depreciating yourself will make me consider that you are trying to depreciate me, so I’ll get up and walk away, or else say something about the weather.”
He had turned his eyes slowly upon her in the course of her long speech—she had spoken her words so rapidly and with such animation it did not seem so very long—and by the time she had ended, which she had with a little flush, he was gazing at her with an expression that was bordering upon wonderment. In the pause that followed, his expression had become lighted up with admiration. Then he looked away from her, and rubbed the tip of his chin with the tip of one forefinger. He became very thoughtful, and the break in their conversation was so long as to assume the proportions of an irreparable rupture. It was, however, nothing of the sort. It was long only because he found it necessary to review and to revise some of the most highly cherished beliefs of his life, and the young woman beside him was fully aware that this was so. She had no mind to obtrude upon his course of thought.
At last he spoke.
“I wonder if you could tell me if I really did think myself a juggins,” he said.
“Why do you ask me such a question, Mr. Wingfield?”
“Because you have opened my eyes to so many things. You have shown that you can read me like a book.”
“Before I talk to you about reading you like a book, I will try to answer your question. I believe that from the first you have been in contact with very foolish people—as foolish as the people at Framsby—it has been called ‘foolish Framsby’ before now.”