"There, madame, you do me too much honour. I am the worst logician in the world. I wrote a part of an essay on Christian chivalry, and did pretty well, till I began to reason; the essay ended, and I was swallowed up in this argument—pray listen to it. To sacrifice your life for the lady you adore is a high degree of heroism; but to sacrifice your soul for her is the highest degree of heroism. But the highest degree of heroism is but another name for Christianity; and, therefore, to act thus can't sacrifice your soul, and if it doesn't you don't practise a heroism, and therefore no Christianity, and, therefore, you do sacrifice your soul. But if you do sacrifice your soul, it is the highest heroism—therefore Christianity; and, therefore, you don't sacrifice your soul, and so, da capo, it goes on for ever—and I can't extricate myself. When I mean to make a boat, I make a net; and this argument that I invented to carry me some little way on my voyage to truth, not only won't hold water, but has caught me by the foot, entangles, and drowns me. I never went on with my essay."
In this cynical trifling there was a contemptuous jocularity quite apparent to me, although mamma took it all in good faith, and said:
"It is very puzzling, but it can't be true; and I should think it almost a duty to find out where it is wrong."
Papa laughed, and said:
"My dear, don't you see that Doctor Droqville is mystifying us?"
I was rather glad, for I did not like it. I was vexed for mamma. Doctor Droqville's talk seemed to me an insolence.
"It is quite true, I am no logician; I had better continue as I am. I make a tolerable physician; if I became a preacher, with my defective ratiocination, I should inevitably lose myself and my audience in a labyrinth. You make but a very short stay in town, I suppose?" he broke off suddenly. "It isn't tempting, so many houses sealed—a city of the dead. One does not like, madame, as your Doctor Johnson said to Mrs. Thrale, to come down to vacuity."
"Well, it is only a visit of two or three days. My daughter Ethel is coming out next spring, and she came up to meet us here. I wish her to have a few weeks with masters, and there are more things to be thought of than you would suppose. Do you think there is anything a country miss would do well to read up that we might have forgotten?"
"Read? read? Oh! yes, two things."
"What are they?"