Ratcliffe was amused. “The stories are new to me,” he said. “It is just as I thought. These are signs of a man who thinks much of trifles; one who fusses over small matters. We don't do things in that way now that we no longer have to get crops from granite, as they used to do in New Hampshire when I was a boy.”
Carrington replied that it was unlucky for Virginians that they had not done things in that way then: if they had, they would not have gone to the dogs.
Gore shook his head seriously; “Did I not tell you so?” said he. “Was not this man an abstract virtue? I give you my word I stand in awe before him, and I feel ashamed to pry into these details of his life. What is it to us how he thought proper to apply his principles to nightcaps and feather dusters? We are not his body servants, and we care nothing about his infirmities. It is enough for us to know that he carried his rules of virtue down to a pin's point, and that we ought, one and all, to be on our knees before his tomb.”
Dunbeg, pondering deeply, at length asked Carrington whether all this did not make rather a clumsy politician of the father of his country.
“Mr. Ratcliffe knows more about politics than I. Ask him,” said Carrington.
“Washington was no politician at all, as we understand the word,” replied Ratcliffe abruptly. “He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done to-day. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.”
“I don't understand!” said Mrs. Lee. “Why could you not do it now?”
“Because I should make a fool of myself;” replied Ratcliffe, pleased to think that Mrs. Lee should put him on a level with Washington. She had only meant to ask why the thing could not be done, and this little touch of Ratcliffe's vanity was inimitable.
“Mr. Ratcliffe means that Washington was too respectable for our time,” interposed Carrington.
This was deliberately meant to irritate Ratcliffe, and it did so all the more because Mrs. Lee turned to Carrington, and said, with some bitterness: