"I believe it to be a fact," Miss Foster replied coldly, "although it is quite possible you may be able to bring forward one or two examples to the contrary."
"I'm trying to think of all the lives of great men that ever I've read, and I can't remember if it said they were tidy or not. I've an idea some of them were not. Goldsmith now----"
"Goldsmith was Irish," Miss Foster interrupted.
"So was Wellington; so's Lord Roberts."
Miss Foster, without being at all sure of her facts, longed to point out that orderliness was a striking characteristic of both these heroes, but the fact of their nationality deterred her.
"I fear," Lallie went on, "that Shakespeare must have had a niggly sort of mind in some ways in spite of his genius, because he left his wife the second-best bed. If he'd been an ordinary, careless, good-natured kind of man he'd never have remembered to specify which bed. Perhaps, though"--and here Lallie spoke more cheerfully, as though she suddenly perceived a rift in this cloud resting upon Shakespeare's memory--"it was his wife who was so tiresome and finnicky, always pestering him about not using the best things, so he left her the second-best bed as a punishment."
Miss Foster made no reply, but opened the Spectator with a flourish and held it up in front of her as a screen.
"Don't you think that is possible, Miss Foster?" Lallie persisted.
"I must refuse to discuss any such absurd contingency. I have already told you that I believe disorderly personal habits to be incompatible with true greatness of character."
Lallie sighed deeply.