He wavered heavily away to fetch the tea, while the Prophet, like a guilty thing, stole towards the library. When he drew near to the door he heard a somewhat resounding hubbub of conversation proceeding within the chamber. He distinguished two voices. One was the hollow and sepulchral organ of Malkiel the Second, the other was a heavy and authoritative contralto, of the buzzing variety, which occasionally gave an almost professional click—suggesting mechanism—as the speaker passed from the lower to the upper register of her voice. As the Prophet reached the mat outside the door he heard the contralto voice say,—
“How are we to know it really is only ankles?”
The voice of Malkiel the Second replied plaintively,—
“But the gentleman who opened the door and—”
The contralto voice clicked, and passed to its upper register.
“You are over fifty years of age,” it said with devastating compassion, “and you can still trust a gentleman who opens doors! O sanctum simplicitatus!”
On hearing this sudden gush of classical erudition the Prophet must have been seized by a paralysing awe, for he remained as if glued to the mat, and made no effort to open the door and step into the room.
“If I am sanctified, Sophronia,” said the voice of Malkiel, “I cannot help it, indeed I can’t. We are as we are.”
“Did Bottom say so in his epics?” cried the contralto, contemptuously. “Did Shakespeare imply that when he invented his immortal Bacon, or Carlyle, the great Cumberland sage, when he penned his world-famed ‘Sartus’?”
“P’r’aps not, my dear. You know best. Still, ordinary men—not that I, of course, can claim to be one—must remain, to a certain extent, what they are.”