I returned to the table of contents:
5. On Sneaking—First Example.
6. Our Tactics, by the Editor.
“She won’t insult you,” said Lalage. “She simply crawls to any grown-up. You should hear her talking to father and pretending that she thinks fishing nice.”
“She’s perfectly right to do that. After all, Lalage, your father is a canon and a certain measure of respect is due to his recreations as well as to his serious work. Besides——”
“It’s never right to crawl to any one.”
“Besides,” I said, “what you call crawling may in reality be sympathy. I’m sure Miss Battersby has a sympathetic disposition. It is very difficult to draw the line between proper respect, flavoured with appreciative sympathy, and what you object to as sycophancy.”
“If you’re going to try and show off,” said Lalage, “by using ghastly long words which nobody could possibly understand you’d better go and do it to the Cat. She’ll like it. I’m not going to sit here all day listening to you. Either read the magazine or don’t, whichever you like. I don’t care whether you do or not, but I won’t be jawed.”
This subdued me at once. I began with the poem:
“Fair Cattersby I weep to see
You haste away by train,
As yet that Latin exercise
Has not been done again.
Stay, stay,
Until amo, I say.
(To be continued in our next)”
“There was a difficulty about the last three lines, I suppose,” I said.