"That's a strange comparison."
"Or a bull-dog may the prizefighter, his master! Do you like that better?"
"Not much; is it a comparison your mother would like?"
"Like!—she is dead!" said he, rather falteringly.
I pressed his arm closer to mine.
"I understand you," said he, with his cynic repellant smile. "But you do wrong to feel for my loss. I feel for it; but no one who cares for me should sympathise with my grief."
"Why?"
"Because my mother was not what the world would call a good woman. I did not love her the less for that—and now let us change the subject."
"Nay; since you have said so much, Vivian, let me coax you to say on. Is not your father living?"
"Is not the Monument standing?"