“My dear Margery,” said he, “you are at heart one of the most unaffected people I know. Pray be equally genuine with your head, and do not encourage Jack in his slipshod habits of thought and conversation by——”
“Slipshod!” interrupted Jack, holding his left arm out at full length before him, the hand of which was shod with a fishing-boot. “Slipshod! They fit as close as your convictions, and would be as stiff and inexorable as logic if I didn’t soften them with this newly-invented and about-to-be-patented ointment by the warmth of a cheerful fire and Margery’s beaming countenance.”
Clement had been reading during this sentence. Then he lifted his head, and said pointedly:
“What I was going to advise you, Margery, is never to get into the habit of adopting sentiments till you are quite sure you really mean them. It is by the painful experience of my own folly that I know what trouble it gives one afterwards. If ever the time comes when you want to know your real opinion on any subject, the process of getting rid of ideas you have adopted without meaning them will not be an easy one.”
I am not as intellectual as the Arkwrights. I can always see through Jack’s jokes, but I am sometimes left far behind when Eleanor or Clement “take flight,” as Jack calls it, on serious subjects. I really did not follow Clement on this occasion.
With some hesitation I said:
“I don’t know that I quite understand.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” said Jack. “I have feared for some time that your hair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this household to penetrate to your brain. Allow me to apply a little of this ointment to the parting, which in your case is more definite than with Eleanor; and as our lightest actions should proceed from principles, I may mention that the principle on which I propose to apply the Leather-softener to your scalp is that on which the blacksmith’s wife gave your cholera medicine to the second girl, when she began with rheumatic fever—‘it did such a deal of good to our William.’ Now, this unguent has done ‘a deal of good’ to the leather of my boots. Why should it not successfully lubricate the skin of your skull?”
Only the dread of “a row” between Jack and Clem enabled me to keep anything like gravity.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Jack!” said I, as severely as I could. (I fear that, like the rest of the world, I snubbed Jack rather than Clement, because his temper was sweeter, and less likely to resent it.) “Clement, I’m very stupid, but I don’t quite see how what you said applies to what I said.”