"You were reading to the ladies?" he said. "I am afraid we have interrupted you."
"Don't mention it," said the rector, with his lofty politeness. "Another time will do. It is a habit of mine, Mr. Nugent, to read aloud in my family circle. As a clergyman and a lover of poetry (in both capacities) I have long cultivated the art of elocution——"
"My dear sir, excuse me, you have cultivated it all wrong!"
Mr. Finch paused, thunderstruck. A man in his presence presuming to have an opinion of his own! a man in the rectory parlor capable of interrupting the rector in the middle of a sentence! guilty of the insane audacity of telling him, as a reader—with Shakespeare open before them—that he read wrong!
"Oh, we heard you as we came in!" proceeded Nugent, with the most undiminished confidence, expressed in the most gentlemanlike manner. "You read it like this." He took up Hamlet and read the opening line of the Fourth Scene, ("The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold") with an irresistibly-accurate imitation of Mr. Finch. "That's nor the way Hamlet would speak. No man in his position would remark that it was very cold in that bow-wow manner. What is Shakespeare before all things? True to nature; always true to nature. What condition is Hamlet in when he is expecting to see the Ghost? He is nervous, and he feels the cold. Let him show it naturally; let him speak as any other man would speak, under the circumstances. Look here! Quick and quiet—like this. 'The air bites shrewdly'—there Hamlet stops and shivers—pur-rer-rer! 'it is very cold.' That's the way to read Shakespeare!"
Mr. Finch lifted his head into the air as high as it could possibly go, and brought the flat of his hand down with a solemn and sounding smack on the open book.
"Allow me to say, sir——!" he began.
Nugent stopped him again, more good-humouredly than ever.
"You don't agree with me? All right! Quite useless to dispute about it. I don't know what you may be—I am the most opinionated man in existence. Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just look at that child!" Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg's attention was suddenly attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs. Finch. "I take the liberty of saying, ma'am, that a more senseless dress doesn't exist, than the dress that is put, in this country, on infants of tender years. What are the three main functions which that child—that charming child of yours-performs? He sucks; he sleeps; and he grows. At the present moment, he isn't sucking, he isn't sleeping—he is growing with all his might. Under those interesting circumstances, what does he want to do? To move his limbs freely in every direction. You let him swing his arms to his heart's content—and you deny him freedom to kick his legs. You clothe him in a dress three times as long as himself. He tries to throw his legs up in the air as he throws his arms, and he can't do it. There is his senseless long dress entangling itself in his toes, and making an effort of what Nature intended to be a luxury. Can anything be more absurd? What are mothers about? Why don't they think for themselves? Take my advice—short petticoats, Mrs. Finch. Liberty, glorious liberty, for my young friend's legs! Room, heaps of room, for that infant martyr's toes!"
Mrs. Finch listened helplessly—lifted the baby's long petticoats, and looked at them—stared piteously at Nugent Dubourg—opened her lips to speak—and, thinking better of it, turned her watery eyes on her husband, appealing to him to take the matter up. Mr. Finch made another attempt to assert his dignity—a ponderously satirical attempt, this time.