I will not quote any more of the lines, because I do not much approve the spirit of those that follow. My dear,” he added, speaking very earnestly and very pathetically, “you have been mercifully dealt with: will you not deal mercifully by another?”
She bent her head till her brow touched the marble chimney-piece, but did not answer for a moment. Then—“You are not going to be hard and unforgiving, are you?” he said.
“No, uncle; I was only thinking,” she replied—“thinking of a remark Georgina made.”
“I should forget it at once,” he recommended.
“It was nothing unpleasant—nothing disagreeable,” answered his niece. “She only said she often wondered what she would have been had she been brought up like me. She seems to imagine her education has made her what she is.”
“Ay, poor thing, ay!” exclaimed Mr. Aggland, pityingly. He always felt very sorry for a woman who had been brought up, as he phrased it, “in the world,” and was quite willing to be of Mrs. Basil Stondon’s opinion.
“There is a reverse side to the question also,” he said, continuing the idea; for education was a hobby it delighted him to ride. “Had you been brought up as she was, Phemie, how would it have fared with you?”
“Better perhaps, uncle,” she replied; but he shook his head and declared she knew she was answering him idly, “for you must believe there is something in early training,” he added, “something in the bending of the twig”—something in hearing when very young of that which makes men,—
‘Ply their daily task with busier feet,
Because their hearts some holy strain repeat.’