“That’s just as people please,” said her sophistical brother. “You know words mean nothing in themselves. If I choose to call my hat my cadwallader, you would understand me just as well, after I had once explained it to you, that by cadwallader I meant this black thing that I put upon my head; cadwallader and hat would then be just the same thing to you.”
“Then why have two words for the same thing?” said Sophy; “and what has this to do with ‘could’ and ‘should’? You wanted to prove—”
“I wanted to prove,” interrupted Frederick, “that it’s not worth while to dispute for two hours about two words. Do keep to the point, Sophy, and don’t dispute with me.”
“I was not disputing, I was reasoning.”
“Well, reasoning or disputing. Women have no business to do either; for, how should they know how to chop logic like men?”
At this contemptuous sarcasm upon her sex, Sophy’s colour rose.
“There!” cried Frederick, exulting, “now we shall see a philosopheress in a passion; I’d give sixpence, half-price, for a harlequin entertainment, to see Sophy in a passion. Now, Marianne, look at her brush dabbing so fast in the water!”
Sophy, who could not easily bear to be laughed at, with some little indignation, said, “Brother, I wish—”
“There! there!” cried Frederick, pointing to the colour which rose in her cheeks almost to her temples—“rising! rising! rising! look at the thermometer! blood heat! blood! fever heat! boiling water heat! Marianne.”
“Then,” said Sophy, smiling, “you should stand a little farther off, both of you. Leave the thermometer to itself a little while. Give it time to cool. It will come down to ‘temperate’ by the time you look again.”