He smiled. There was something so appealing in the sweet eyes uplifted to his, that the expression they conveyed gave him a sense of masterfulness, and he felt he must be very tolerant with this charming bit of wayward feminine feeling.
“Dear little lady,” he said, with quite a patronising air, “I won’t be anything you don’t want me to be! Only just try and think about commonplace facts now and then,—and don’t take your pretty ideals for realities. You have put a glamour on your old Philosopher—you think he’s so clever that he can’t afford to be anything else. But I tell you cleverness isn’t everything and most learned men are bores! Selfish bores, too—cynics and—whatd’ye-call-’em—iconoclasts. There’s a word for you!—such a mouthful!—it means—”
“Breakers of idols,” she said, softly and musingly. “Destroyers of hope and faith!—cruel mockers of noble effort—”
“That’s it!” and Jack got up from the grass, and stretched his supple, elegant figure of which he might have been proud,—but he wasn’t. “And you’ll find your Philosopher comes up to the scratch in all those particulars when you put him through his paces. ‘The Deterioration of Language Invariably Perceived’ is nothing to the Deterioration of a Man who thinks himself superior to all other men.”
She rose from her bank of moss and thyme and stood for a minute, looking at the river.
“How lovely it is here!” she said. “I should like to stay here for hours!”
“So should I,” agreed Jack, “with you!”
She laughed, and looking up at him, flushed a pretty rose-colour.
“You’re bold!” she said.
“As brass!” he responded, gaily. “I’m not a Philosopher!”