‘I quite see it isn’t any use. Though one spoke with the tongues of men and of angels—’
‘And had not charity,’ I continued for him. ‘Precisely. I won’t go on, but your quotation is very apt.’
‘I so bow down before her simplicity. It makes a wide and beautiful margin for the rest of her character. She is a girl Ruskin would have loved.’
‘I wonder,’ said I. ‘He did seem fond of the simple type, didn’t he?’
‘Her mind is so clear, so transparent. The motive spring of everything she says and does is so direct. Don’t you find you can most completely depend upon her?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said; ‘certainly. I nearly always know what she is going to say before she says it, and under given circumstances I can tell precisely what she will do.’
‘I fancy her sense of duty is very beautifully developed.’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘There is hardly a day when I do not come in contact with it.’
‘Well, that is surely a good thing. And I find that calm poise of hers very restful.’
‘I would not have believed that so many virtues could reside in one young lady,’ I said, taking refuge in flippancy, ‘and to think that she should be my daughter!’