Two hours of every afternoon were devoted by father and daughter to a long walk in company, sometimes a mere shopping or calling tour, but generally an excursion into the pure country of fields and forest as yet so easily reached from the centre of New Boston. The Doctor preserved a reminiscence of his college botany, and attempted to impart some of his knowledge of plants to Lillie. But she was a hopeless scholar; she persisted in caring for little except human beings and such literature as related directly to them, meaning thereby history, biography, novels and poetry; she remained delightfully innocent of all the ologies.
"You ought to have been born four thousand years ago, Lillie," he exclaimed in despair over some new instance of her incapacity to move in his favorite grooves. "So far as you are concerned, Linnæus, Humboldt, Lyell, Faraday, Agassiz and Dana might as well not have lived. I believe you will go through life without more knowledge of science than just enough to distinguish between a plant and a pebble."
"I do hope so, papa," replied the incorrigible and delightful ignoramus.
When they met one of their acquaintance on these walks the Doctor would not allow him to pass with a nod and a smile, after the unobtrusive New Boston fashion. He would stop him, shake hands cordially, inquire earnestly after his health and family, and before parting contrive to say something personally civil, if not complimentary; all of which would evidently flatter the New Bostonian, but would also as evidently discompose him and turn his head, as being a man unaccustomed to much social incense.
"Papa, you trouble these people," Lillie would sometimes expostulate. "They don't know where to put all your civilities and courtesies. They don't seem to have pockets for them."
"My child, I am nothing more than ordinarily polite."
"Nothing more than ordinary in Louisiana, but something very extraordinary here. I have just thought why all the gentlemen one meets at the South are so civil. It is because the uncivil ones are shot as fast as they are discovered."
"There is something in that," admitted the Doctor. "I suppose duelling has something to do with the superficial good manners current down there. But just consider what an impolite thing shooting is in itself. To knock and jam and violently push a man into the other world is one of the most boorish and barbarous discourtesies that I can imagine. How should I like to be treated that way! I think I never should be reconciled to the fact or its author."
"But these New Bostonians are so poky—so awfully serious."