“Some are much better than others,” I interrupted.
“I saw eleven of us,” she went on with depression, “one after the other, this morning. I couldn’t help thinking of articles on a counter marked ‘all this size five and elevenpence-ha’penny.’”
“Never mind, Delia,” said I, “you are not at all alike.”
“Oh, and nobody,” she hastened to apologize, “could be less alike than you.”
“And yet we are quite different,” I replied; and Delia, with a glance of reproach and scorn and laughter said, “You jackass!”
Now in anybody else’s mouth this term would be almost opprobrious, but from Delia’s it drops affectionately. It is an acknowledgment, a compliment, it helps to lighten the morning. It is not everybody who could call one a jackass with impunity, but it is not everybody who would think of doing it. I should not wish the epithet to become the fashion, but when Delia offers it I roll it under my tongue.
“I am convinced,” said I, “that there is nothing in the world so valuable as personality. I mean, of course, to other people. As you justly remark, Delia, we are round pebbles on this coral strand, worn smooth by rubbing against nothing but each other. It is an obscure and little regarded form of the great Imperial sacrifice, but I wish somebody would call attention to it in the Daily Mail and wring a tear from the British public. You have still a slight unevenness of surface, my Delia, and that is why I love you. If you had a good sharp corner or two, I should never let you out of my sight.”
“And to think,” said Delia, finely, “how little, in England, they prize and value their precious angular old maids!”
“Oh, in England,” I replied, “I think they are almost too much blessed. There is such a thing as tranquillity and repose. You don’t want the personal equation at every meal. In England, especially in the academic parts, you can’t see the wood for the trees.”
“And in America,” observed Delia, “I suppose it must be worse.”