"They're so like people, papa!"
"Oh, then surely the people must be the more interesting after all, if it is the likeness of the fishes to people that makes them interesting! Which of all the people you love do you see likest a fish now?"
"Oh, papa!"
"What! is it only people you hate that you see like fishes?"
"I don't hate anybody, papa."
"There's a way of not caring about people, though—looking down on them and seeing them like fishes, that's precious like hating them," said Cornelius, who enjoyed a crowd, and putting his sister in the wrong still better: to that end he could easily say a sensible thing.
"If you mean me, Corney, I think you do me injustice," said Hester. "The worst I do is to look at them the wrong way of the telescope."
"But why do you never see anyone you love like a fish?" persisted her father.
"Perhaps because I could not love anybody that was like a fish."
"Certainly there is something not beautiful about them!" said Mr. Raymount.