“Why, I was thinking—” began Gilbert.
“Yes, yes!” eagerly prompted Mrs. Farrell, “thinking (really thinking! Of course you can’t have been doing it long!)—thinking—”
“That it was a very inconvenient practice to inquire into the right and wrong of many things,” proceeded Gilbert, in solid indifference to her light impertinences; whereupon she seemed to suffer some evanescent confusion. “It gives you no sort of moral leeway. Suppose you want to do something—anything—out of the ordinary line of things that you do or don’t do; well, if you haven’t considered too impertinently of right and wrong in general, you do it without once thinking whether you ought or oughtn’t, and there you are on the safe side, anyway.”
“Oh, what a beautiful philosophy!” moaned Mrs. Farrell, clasping her hands together without moving her elbows from their careless pose. She rested her cheek a moment on her folded hands; then she asked with a voice full of mock emotion, “Do you think it would do for Woman, Mr. Gilbert? It seems just made for her!”
“I hadn’t thought about Woman,” said Gilbert; “that’s a matter still to be considered. You must give me time.”
“Oh yes, we will be patient—patient!” and Mrs. Farrell began to shell the peas with an air of tragical endurance. “Take any length of time you wish. But in the meanwhile, can’t you state the Eastonian principle more fully?”
“Only by saying that it’s the opposite of the system you admire and covet. Easton isn’t a man to formulate his ideas very freely. You’re astounded every now and then by some extraordinary piece of apparently quite uncalled-for uprightness, and then you find that he had long contemplated some such exigency, and had his conscience in perfect training.”
“How very droll!” said Mrs. Farrell. Then she said, looking at him through her eyelashes, “It’s quite touching to see such attached friends.”
Gilbert stirred uneasily on his block, and answered, “It’s a great honor to form part of a spectacle affecting to you, Mrs. Farrell—if you mean Easton and me.”
“Yes, I do. Don’t scoff at my weak impressibility. You must see that it’s a thing calculated to rouse a woman’s curiosity. You seem so very different!”