“As if having searched into the innermost recesses of the body, and not having found a soul, they considered themselves justified in declaring there was none.”
“Just so.”
“Well, that is true of the commonplace amongst them, I do believe. You will find the exceptions have been men of fine minds and characters—not such as he of whom Chaucer says,
‘His study was but little on the Bible;’
for if you look at the rest of the description of the man, you will find that he was in alliance with his apothecary for their mutual advantage, that he was a money-loving man, and that some of Chaucer’s keenest irony is spent on him in an off-hand, quiet manner. Compare the tone in which he writes of the doctor of physic, with the profound reverence wherewith he bows himself before the poor country-parson.”
Here Wynnie spoke, though with some tremor in her voice.
“I never know, papa, what people mean by talking about childhood in that way. I never seem to have been a bit younger and more innocent than I am.”
“Don’t you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you—the sky and the earth, say—seemed to you much grander than they seem now? You are old enough to have lost something.”
She thought for a little while before she answered.
“My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else.”