'You do not seem to feel for her, and yet she helped you, as you may remember.'
'Of course I am very sorry. I am sorry when I hear a mason has fallen off a scaffold, or a child has tumbled into a well, or a horse has broken his knees; I am sorry when a donkey is roughly treated. But unless I am acquainted with the mason, and the child, and the horse, and the ass, I do not feel more than a transient pity. You possibly have seen sufficient of this wild girl to possess some interest in her; I know absolutely nothing of her. How, then, can I feel for her more than I do when I say I am sorry?'
'May I take a chair?'
'Certainly. Sit down, and we will talk. I have something I wish particularly to say to you. I am sorry that I let you go the other time without thanking you formally for having rescued me from the broken carriage, for having seen to the funeral of my poor father, and for having conveyed me hither to the care of these people here.'
She spoke without any expression in her tone, simply as though repeating a lesson learned by rote. When she had spoken, she drew a long breath like a sigh of relief. She had discharged a duty. It was off her mind, and she was free.
'You see for yourself, Mr. Herring, that the feelings of the heart are too sacred to be dispersed over the earth, to be scattered like coins amidst a crowd of beggars. One meets with some thousands of persons in the course of existence, and cannot cut one's heart into little bits and present each with a portion. We must reserve it for true friends, and give it them entire. Those who pass us by, and whom we see but for a while, are like the figures of a mastic-lantern slide: they make us laugh, or they interest us for the moment, and then are forgotten. When we hear that a slide is broken, we ask, which? The man driving a wheelbarrow, or the old woman who desired she were pope, or the cabbage that becomes a tailor? When we are informed, we do not weep, we merely say, It can be replaced.'
'I hope you do not class the Battishills among your magic-lantern slides.'
'No, I know them, and they have been kind to me. I even like Mr. Battishill. He has his ideas.'
'And Miss Cicely?'
'She is rustic and good-hearted. But she does not think. She has no knowledge of books. She could be made passable if sent to school, but must be recreated to be given ideas. Besides, I am not fond of the plump and the ingénue.'