Unless we are unpleasant sort of people we cannot be generous about an injury unless we have first been mollified to some extent; and what more mollifying than to find that the supposed injury has never been done? Percy saw this more clearly than Reginald, who was quite morbid about wanting to be in the right, always.
It is an interesting question what stupid persons find to get in a temper about, because, if you come to think of it, there is nothing in the world except stupidity (our own or other people’s) to make anyone fractious, and, of course, stupid people cannot mind or they wouldn’t be stupid. Good, just people may be angered by the wilful wickedness of some one who is determined not to do the thing required; but anger is not temper. Temper, that horrible itching and pain in one’s social sense, can only be brought on by stupidity, real or imagined, in other people (I count inanimate objects such as shirt studs and hair as people because they can be just as irritating). Consider for a moment the persons who cause temper in a household: husbands, wives, children, and servants. Wives and servants, on an average, probably cause more temper because, on an average, they are stupider than husbands and children. Relations are apt to be very thick-headed—perhaps because blood is thicker than water—almost as bad as tradesmen at the telephone. Friends are practically never stupid, while acquaintances often reach the extreme limit of what it is possible to bear. Compared to relations, who, as we have said, are as bad as tradesmen at the telephone, acquaintances are as bad as the half-witted boy who is usually left in charge of the station-master’s office.
Talking of station-masters, and à propos of wives being stupider than husbands, I feel absolutely certain that no station-master has ever spent such a day as would be inevitable for him if he were a wife, and his staff were nice, hardworking girls.
Imagine a platform full of people waiting for the 9·45 express to Holyhead. “Oh no, m’m,” says the female station-master’s second-in-command, with a silly smile, “the 9·45 hasn’t come up yet. I expect it’ll be just coming now. I’ve sent to tell the engine-driver that you’re waiting, and she says that she was a bit late this morning, as they hadn’t brought the coal.” She observes the infuriated passengers and beams upon them with her mouth open. “It is a pity, isn’t it, keeping them waiting! They do seem upset! Just fancy! What a shame!!” (It will be such a help to everyone connected with this book if all the capable ladies who run their houses to perfection will just begin to skip here, and not say anything more about it; because we know the other side of the question quite well, and the whole thing is hardly serious enough for argument.) When the matter of the 9·45 has been sifted to the bottom, it is found that the coal was only an excuse; the engine-driver really hadn’t an idea of the time. She was just washing out a few handkerchiefs in the waiting-room, where the old lady in charge never noticed her doing it; she thought she had come about the windows.
Or, again, what would happen if a man of business told his clerk to telephone for a hundredweight of grey blotting-paper, and while he wrote at his desk he had to endure this sort of thing (as we do when we ask our maids to send a telephone message): “Is that Hoggins’s? I say, is that Hoggins’s? Hoggins. Aren’t you a stationer? Beppardon?—yes, a stationer—oh, well, we want a hundredweight of blotting-paper at once, please. Beppardon? This is Mr. Beadle’s. Beadle and Sons—J. J. Beadle and Sons—will you send it at once, please. Beppardon? Beadle and Sons—Oh yes, I’m sorry—I thought you knew—44 Dacre Street—Dacre Street—No, not Baker—Dacre. [The man of business growls from his desk, “You didn’t tell him grey blotting-paper.”] What’s that? Beppardon? Yes, Dacre Street. A hundredweight of blotting-paper at once. [The man of business intervenes again, gnashing his teeth, “Grey blotting-paper.”] Beppardon? Pink or white? Oh, either, thank you—yes, please. Good morning. [Rings off.] Beppardon, sir? Did you speak?”
That is the sort of occasion when Generosity does not care to hear what Justice has to say. If an angel came down from heaven and unjustly beat the offending clerk, the man of business would find it easy to say, “Poor fellow, he was doing his best,” and to give him half a crown for a new hat.
If all the efficient females will sit down quite quietly we will add what we were about to say, that men are just as irritating, but they don’t mean so inexcusably well. Take, for instance, the man at an inquiry office; he doesn’t mean well. “I want a ticket to Leamington,” you say. He gives you a first-class ticket, and you remonstrate. “You didn’t say which you wanted,” he retorts, getting impudent at once. “You never asked,” is your very natural reply.
Or, take a conjurer or magic-lantern man. You say, “I want you to be very careful, please, not to do anything to frighten the children. There will be some quite little ones, and they don’t like anything at all alarming.” “Oh, we understand children perfectly, Madam,” he says, “I know exactly the sort of thing you require.”