On Wednesday morning, Anne Lyndsay woke up with what her brother called one of the acute attacks of curiosity in regard to Mrs. Maybrook. They were subject to variations and accompaniments. She shared with her friend, Dr. North, the fancy for imagining what certain persons, real or unreal, would do under circumstances which she contrived for them. It was the byplay of a restless intellect. Lyndsay, who was in his professional work keenly logical, had at times no patience with Anne’s amusing nonsense. He labeled it “mental vagabondage” or “mind gossip.”
She was just now outside in her hammock, enjoying the wonderful weather of a Canadian river in mid-June. She was also busy considering Dorothy Maybrook in a variety of new social surroundings; as to what she would say or do in a drawing-room, or if of a sudden dropped into a seat at a Boston dinner-party, between Emerson and Wendell Holmes. And then she laughed aloud in her satisfaction at reseating her between Polonius and Mercutio.
“What amuses you?” said Lyndsay, as he came out of the cabin with his beloved “Marcus Aurelius,” a finger in between the leaves. “What, no book?”
She related gaily her occupation.
“Upon my word, Anne, I am unable to conceive what pleasure you can take in such stuff.” He was in one of his severer moods, when to be merely logical was alone possible. As Anne said, it was pretty hard to switch Archie off on a siding. He had his own moods, gay or serious; but for the time they were despotic, and disabled him temporarily from entering into those of others.
“My dear Archie,” she returned, “you have no mental charity; at least, not of a morning. Now, if I were to ask you, to-night, to imagine Dorothy at dinner between George the Third and Edgar Poe, you would just as like as not assist my imagination with an added pair of wings, and—”
“Very likely,” he interrupted. “I suppose it is the result of long habit. I came out just now to ask you how this passage strikes you.”
She was at once all interest. “What is it, Archie?”
“‘Cast away opinion; thou art saved. Who, then, hinders thee from casting it away?’”
Anne laughed, “Try it,” she said. “Cast away opinions—have none, and you won’t be bothered with the need to trouble yourself with this old heathen’s. I agree with him. Opinions are like gowns: it is so nice to change them! I am all the time giving away mine, and it is delightful to see how ill they fit other folk.” She was, in reality, of all people, the most definite and clear as to her religion and her politics.