"Very nearly answering the question as you understand it."
"May I ask how you understand it?"
"As you do, Sir."
"Is there no high breeding then in the world?" asked good- natured Mrs. Thorn, who could be touched on this point of family.
"There is very little of it. What is commonly current under the name, is merely counterfeit notes which pass from hand to hand of those who are bankrupt in the article."
"And to what serve, then," said Mrs. Evelyn, colouring, "the long lists of good old names which even you, Mr. Carleton, I know, do not disdain?"
"To endorse the counterfeit notes," said Mr. Carleton, smiling.
"Guy, you are absurd!" said his mother. "I will not sit at the table and listen to you if you talk such stuff. What do you mean?"
"I beg your pardon, mother, you have misunderstood me," said he, seriously. "Mind, I have been talking, not of ordinary conformity to what the world requires, but of that fine perfection of mental and moral constitution, which, in its own natural necessary acting, leaves nothing to be desired, in every occasion or circumstance of life. It is the pure gold, and it knows no tarnish; it is the true coin, and it gives what it proffers to give; it is the living plant ever blossoming, and not the cut and art-arranged flowers. It is a thing of the mind altogether; and where nature has not curiously prepared the soil, it is in vain to try to make it grow. This is not very often met with!"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Carleton; " but you are so fastidiously nice in all your notions! at this rate nothing will ever satisfy you."