"My dear sir, I don't know what you mean—why—what"—
Haven't you been in the habit of telling your friends so after dinner?" enquired Mr Roe; "now, remember."
"Well! I may perhaps have said that he hoped to be chancellor."
"No, no—you have uniformly stated as a fact that he had the written promise of the office—and you have constantly appealed to your aunt for the truth of your statement."
"La! Mr Roe—how should I know about law and chancellorships? It isn't a lady's business."
"It is a lady's business not to corroborate a falsehood."
"Really, my good sir," said Mr Gillingham Howard, "you are too hard on a little after-dinner talk."
"Not a bit, not a bit—that after-dinner talk, as you call it, for forty years, day after day retailing falsehoods, and asseverating them so constantly, that you at last almost succeed in deceiving yourself, does away all the distinctions in your mind between truth and falsehood—and when once the boundary is broke down, there is no farther pause. A man may go on, and boast about his cricket and shooting till he would not stick at a false oath."
"Sir! I bear many things from an old friend of our family, but an imputation on my veracity is intolerable. Do I ever deviate from the truth, Aunt Susan?"
"You! Oh, no! if there's any quality you excel in more than another, it is your truth. Low people may tell lies, and of course do; but you! Mr Gillingham Howard!—you are a perfect gentleman, from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot."