'Then I wish you would talk. Mrs. Dallas desires that I should entertain you; and how am I to do that unless I know you better?'
'So you think people's characters come out in talking?'
'If not their characters, at least something of what is in their heads—what they know—and don't know; what they can talk about, in short.'
'I do not know anything—to talk about.'
'Oh, fie, Mr. Dallas! you who have been to Oxford and London. Tell me, what is London like? An overgrown New York, I suppose.'
'No, neither. "Overgrown" means grown beyond strength or usefulness.
London is large, but not overgrown, in any sense.'
'Well, like New York, only larger?'
'No more than a mushroom is like a great old oak. London is like that; an old oak, gnarled and twisted and weather-worn, with plenty of hale life and young vigour springing out of its rugged old roots.'
'That sounds—poetical.'
'If you mean, not true, you are under a mistake.'