"I can prove there ain't one word o' truth in it," she continued pertinaciously.
"What's your idea of proof, Ida?"
"I can prove it on the Bible," she replied eagerly.
"That settles the matter beyond controversy—considering that you rightly belong to the Middle Ages."
"Indeed I don't!" she replied, with a flash of resentment. "I was twenty-seven last birthday; an' I don't care who knows it—on the third of July, it was—an' I would n't care tuppence if her ladyship snoke roun' tellin' people I was forty. But to put a slur on me like that! I leave it to your own self, Mr. Collins—was it right?"
"Right? I repeated wearily. "In heaven's name, girl, what does it signify to you whether it was right or otherwise? That's Mrs. Beaudesart's own business, not yours. Why, if she charged me with stooping to folly, I would merely say, 'Sorry to undeceive you, ma'am; but I've been too much given to letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would," like the poor bandicoot i' the adage.' But I certainly shouldn't concern myself with a question lying entirely between herself and Saint Peter."
"Ah! but you're different," replied the girl sadly.
"Simply because I'm a philosopher, Ida. I've held communion with the Unfathomable, and watched the exfoliation of the Inscrutable; and, you know, these things are altogether beyond the orbit of the girl-mind. Now clear off, like a good fellow, and let me read the papers."
But I was too far gone to take any interest in either of the loathsome contemporanes; too much afflicted even to drift down to the swimming-hole again, much as I desired to do so. I also longed for the opinion of my mighty pipe on the dirt-question; but that faithful ally was packed among my things, forty feet away, and it might as well have been forty miles. So I just lay on the seat, clean, frail, and inert, as a recumbent statue, moulded in blanc-mange; whilst the ancient t'other-sider oscillated his frame—saw, and the pious Pawsome lightened his toil with selections from Sankey, and the perspiring Priestley hurried up his bullocks from the ration-paddock, and Sling Muck, the gardener, used his hoe among the callots and cabbagee, with the automatic stroke of a man brought up to one holiday per annum, and no Sunday. Meanwhile, the unreturning sands of Life dribbled through the unheeded isthmus of the Present Moment; and the fixed cone of the Past expanded; and the dimple deepened in the diminished and hurrying Future.
Nevertheless, I collected the wreckage of what had been very fair faculties, and attempted to grapple with an idea which Ida's conversation had suggested. Finding this impossible, I made a mental memo. of the inspiration—and by the same token, I neatly utilised it within the next few hours. Your attention will be drawn to the circumstance in due season.