"No doubt, no doubt," acquiesced Nora. "But suppose you had a weak leg and it gave way at a critical moment—say just when you were entering an opera box to greet a lady. Suppose it dropped you in a ridiculous or humiliating manner. You would rage and be distressed, and make up your mind not to let it occur again, except in the seclusion of your own apartments; but—well, it would be quite as likely to serve you the same trick the following week, in church."
"The illustration does not strike me as quite fair," said Mr. Bailey, judicially.
"Good, Ned! Don't let her argue you into an interest in that little cat. She was simply a malicious little—"
"Wait, then," said Nora, ignoring her husband's outburst and looking steadily at Margaret Mintem's new judge, who was showing signs of passing a sentence no less severe than if it were delivered by Cuthbert Wagner himself.
"Suppose we take your memory. Are there not some names or dates that will drop out at times and leave you awkwardly in the lurch?"
"Well, rather," said Mr. Bailey, disgustedly. This was his weak spot.
"Now, don't you see that a person who has a perfect memory might be as unfair to you as you are to my old school friend in her little moral weakness—if we may call it by so harsh a term as that? That was her one vulnerable spot. It may have been born in her. That I do not know; but I insist that it was trained and drilled into her as much as her arithmetic or her catechism were, and with a result as inevitable. She loathed her fault, but it was too strong for her. Her resolution to conquer it dropped just short of success very often, indeed; and oh! how it did hurt her when she realized it and thought it all over, for her motives were unusually pure, and her moral sense was really very high indeed."
"Moral sense was a little frayed at the edges, I think."
"Don't, Cuthbert. You are such a cruelly severe judge. I know Mr. Bailey is on my side, now, and will think you very unfair. He does not mean to be, I assure you, Mr. Bailey, and if she had not spoken ill of me he would see the case fairly. But what are you thinking?"
"That it is a rather big question. That I—that I have overstayed my time. I just came over to ask you to dine with us next Thursday. My mother has some friends and wants you to meet them. May I leave my judicial decision open until then?"