“One gets accustomed to anything in time, even the eccentricities of one’s friends.”
“Do you think I’m eccentric?”
“Do I think—Have you ever known any one who didn’t think you eccentric?”
Upon this he pondered solemnly.
“It’s so long since I’ve stopped to consider what people think of me. One hasn’t time, you know.”
“Then one is unhuman. I have time.”
“Of course. But you haven’t anything else to do.”
As this was quite true, she naturally felt annoyed.
“Knowing as you do all the secrets of my inner life,” she observed sarcastically, “of course you are in a position to judge.”
Her own words recalled Carroll’s charge, and though, with the subject of them before her, it seemed ridiculously impossible, yet the spirit of mischief, ever hovering about her like an attendant sprite, descended and took possession of her speech. She assumed a severely judicial expression.