Milverton. I must come upon you unawares.
Ellesmere. After the essay you certainly might. Let us decamp now and do something great in the way of education—teach Rollo, though he is but a short-haired dog, to go into the water. That will be a feat.
CHAPTER IX.
Ellesmere succeeded in persuading Rollo to go into the water, which proved more, he said, than the whole of Milverton’s essay, how much might be done by judicious education. Before leaving my friends, I promised to come over again to Worth-Ashton in a day or two, to hear another essay. I came early and found them reading their letters.
“You remember Annesleigh at college,” said Milverton, “do you not, Dunsford?”
Dunsford. Yes.
Milverton. Here is a long letter from him. He is evidently vexed at the newspaper articles about his conduct in a matter of —, and he writes to tell me that he is totally misrepresented.
Dunsford. Why does he not explain this publicly?
Milverton. Yes, you naturally think so at first, but such a mode of proceeding would never do for a man in office, and rarely, perhaps, for any man. At least, so the most judicious people seem to think. I have known a man in office bear patiently, without attempting any answer, a serious charge which a few lines would have entirely answered, indeed, turned the other way. But then he thought, I imagine, that if you once begin answering, there is no end to it, and also, which is more important, that the public journals were not a tribunal which he was called to appear before. He had his official superiors.
Dunsford. It should be widely known and acknowledged then, that silence does not give consent in these cases.