“No, ma’am, that, I regret to say, is universal. Besides, I did not particularly mean you. I only mean that there are such women, as we both know, dear lady, who prey upon young boys. They employ for this purpose all their confidence and generosity without the least scruple. And many a hard, bitter, cynical man has originally had his faith in and his regard for everything good and holy blasted in his very first boyhood by the confiding nature and generosity of some middle-aged woman or another and her subsequent references to the advantage he took of her.”
“It is possible that you speak with the clearness recommended by Quintilian as the chief virtue of speech,—born in Spain about 25 A.D., died about 95 A.D., patronized by Vespasian and Domitian,—but it is certain that I do not understand one word of your speaking.”
“—However,” Gerald continued, “when a boy has a nice, clean friendship with an older woman it is one of the most valuable and helpful experiences that can come into his life. A friendship such as this appears to me a rather beautiful idea. The older woman—particularly when she is older by many thousands of years,—can teach him, as his mother out of the superficial knowledge of a callow half-century or so cannot possibly do, about women. She can inspire and direct him. She can fire his ambition. She can encourage him. She can be to him in every way a liberal education.”
“Now, certainly, I shall never understand your American way of uttering so many platitudes—derived from the Greek word platys, meaning ‘flat,’—when I was attempting to do all these things!”
“Ah, but we must keep the education entirely oral, and we must keep, too, your little hands—So, now, that is very much better!”
“It is better still to permit a wilful person to have his way,—a remark attributed to Periander, an ancient sage, and Tyrant of Corinth during the sixth century B.C.,—since you elect to give me my honorarium for nothing,” Evaine said, rather sulkily.
Gerald elected to do nothing of the sort. But, since his real intentions would have been an awkward matter to explain, he kept silent about them.
After that Gerald questioned the learned Fox-Spirit. She explained to him willingly enough the laws of Lytreia and described the basket they were found in, and she made it plain just how these laws were enforced by a committee of midwives and stonemasons. She spoke of the magic she had put upon Lytreia. She spoke of Tenjo, telling how in the prime of his youth he came to be called Tenjo of the Long Nose; and her statistics were remarkable. She talked then about the wind between the stars, and about the grandeur that was Greece, and about Hobson’s choice, and about Davey Jones’s locker, and about the cause of volcanoes, and about the curate’s egg, and about the best cures for baldness. For no information anywhere was hidden from the wisdom of Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods.
“I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have knowledge, and I like your reflections extremely. So do you speak yet further out of the stores of your omniscience!”
He had been glancing all the while toward the veiled Mirror of the Two Truths. But he of course said never a word about this mirror. His present task was simply to lure on this cultured and malefic creature to her complete ruin.