“That is well. Negations often answer questions quite sufficiently in the affirmative. I know she did talk to you, and about that miserable tombstone. She cannot help it, poor mother!”
“Yes. I thought it pitiable. She seemed unable to escape from it.”
“It is like her; but it is not wise. Margaret is persistent always. Her likes and dislikes are changeless. She is obstinate in her kindness, her loves, and her charities. As good as gold, we say; but goodness, like gold, is not an insurance of fertile results in all its relations. I mean that goodness can be sometimes exasperating. But, as usual, my tongue is indiscreet. I would like you to understand her. She is worth the trouble.”
“Thank you. I never can forget her tenderness and her kind carefulness. Never!”
“Our real battles are over my books. She says my little library is a wilderness of books, and every autumn, on my return, I find the servants have had orders to dust my books.”
“How dreadful!”
“Is it not? And the strange things that happen! I like to arrange my books so that they shall be happy, and when I come home and find Swinburne in among the volumes of Jeremy Taylor, and Darwin sandwiched between Addison and the ‘Religio Medici,’ I get frantic and say things. It is useless.”
“How sad!”
“I shall assure her we—you and I—were only gossiping. She has an abiding impression that I talk only high science, and I detest science. Talk I must.”
“I think it will do me no harm. I am now quite easy. I have no fever.”