“Not understand it!” he exclaimed, with a slight elevation of his eyebrows. “My dear madam, it is most plain, but I fear my want of good English does render me not quite intelligible.”
“Your English is excellent,” replied Mrs Stoutley, with a smile, “but I fear that my brain is not a sufficiently clear one on such matters, for I confess that I cannot understand it. Can you, Captain Wopper?”
“Certainly not, ma’am,” answered the Captain, thinking of the fickle Lawrence; “it takes the wind out of my sails entirely.”
“Indeed!” said the Professor. “Well, do permit me to try again. You understand that all the mountain-tops and elevated plateaus, for many miles around here, are covered with ice and snow.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Captain, awaking to the fact that his answer was not relevant; “may I ax what is the particular pint that puzzles you, ma’am?”
Emma laughed aloud at this, and coughed a little to conceal the fact. She was rather easily taken by surprise with passing touches of the ludicrous, and had not yet acquired the habit of effectually suppressing little explosions of undertoned mirth.
“The thing that puzzles me,” said Mrs Stoutley, “is, that glaciers should flow, as I am told they do, and yet that they should be as hard and brittle as glass.”
“Ah, well, yes, just so, h’m!” said the Captain, looking very wise; “that is exactly the pint that I want to know myself; for no man who looks at the great tongue of that glacier day Bossung—”
“Des Bossons,” said the Professor, with a bland smile.
“Day Bossong,” repeated the Captain, “can deny that it is marked with all the lines, and waves, an eddies of a rollin’ river, an’ yet as little can they deny that it seems as hard-and-fast as the rock of Gibraltar.”