“We live too fast; we are too much troubled about outward things—cooks and dressmakers, Mrs. Temperley,” said Professor Theobald.
“Poor cooks and dressmakers!” murmured Professor Fortescue, “where are their serenities and urbanities?”
“I would not deprive any person of the good things of life,” cried Valeria; “but at present, it is only a few who can appreciate and contribute to the delicate essence that I speak of. I don’t think one could expect it of one’s cook, after all.”
“One is mad to expect anything of those who have had no chance,” said Professor Fortescue. “That nevertheless we consistently do,—or what amounts to the same thing: we plume ourselves on what chance has enabled us to be and to achieve, as if between us and the less fortunate there were some great difference of calibre and merit. Nine times in ten, there is nothing between us but luck.”
“Oh, dear, you are democratic, Professor!” cried Lady Engleton.
“No; I am merely trying to be just.”
“To be just you must apply your theory to men and women, as well as to class and class,” Valeria suggested.
“Mon Dieu! but so I do; so I always have done, as soon as I was intellectually short-coated.”
“And would you excuse all our weaknesses on that ground?” asked Lady Engleton, with a somewhat ingratiating upward gaze of her blue eyes.
“I would account for them as I would account for the weaknesses of my own sex. As for excusing, the question of moral responsibility is too involved to be decided off-hand.”