Volume Ii Part 15 (2/2)
”I have learned, Mr. Thorn, by sad experience, that the rough hands break more than the clods. One day I set Philetus to work among my flowers; and the first thing I knew, he had pulled up a fine pa.s.sion-flower which didn't make much show above ground, and was displaying it to me with the grave commentary, 'Well! that root did grow to a great haigth!' ”
”Some mental clod-breaking to be done up there, isn't there?”
said Thorn, in a kind of aside. ”I cannot express my admiration at the idea of your dealing with those boors, as it has been described to me.”
”They do not deserve the name, Mr. Thorn,” said Fleda. ”They are many of them most sensible and excellent people, and friends that I value very highly.”
”Ah! your goodness would make friends of everything.”
”Not of boors, I hope,” said Fleda, coolly. ”Besides, what do you mean by the name?”
”Anybody incapable of appreciating that of which you alone should be unconscious,” he said, softly.
Fleda stood impatiently tapping her flowers against her left hand.
”I doubt their power of appreciation reaches a point that would surprise you, Sir.”
”It does indeed ? if I am mistaken in my supposition,” he said, with a glance which Fleda refused to acknowledge.
”What proportion, do you suppose,” she went on, ”of all these roomfuls of people behind us ? without saying anything uncharitable ? what proportion of them, if compelled to amuse themselves for two hours at a bookcase, would pitch upon Macaulay's Essays, or anything like them, to spend the time?”
”Hum ? really, Miss Fleda,” said Thorn, ”I should want to brush up my Algebra considerably before I could hope to find x, y, and z in such a confusion of the alphabet.”
”Or extract the small sensible root of such a quant.i.ty of light matter,” said Mr. Stackpole.
”Will you bear with my vindication of my country friends? ?
Hugh and I sent for a carpenter to make some new arrangement of shelves in a cupboard where we kept our books; he was one of these boors, Mr. Thorn, in no respect above the rest. The right stuff for his work was wanting, and while it was sent for, he took up one of the volumes that were lying about, and read perseveringly until the messenger returned. It was a volume of Macaulay's Miscellanies; and afterwards he borrowed the book of me.”
”And you lent it to him?” said Constance.
”Most a.s.suredly; and with a great deal of pleasure.”
”And is this no more than a common instance, Miss Ringgan?”
said Mr. Carleton.
”No, I think not,” said Fleda; the quick blood in her cheeks again answering the familiar voice and old a.s.sociations; ? ”I know several of the farmers' daughters around us that have studied Latin and Greek; and philosophy is a common thing; and I am sure there is more sense ?”
She suddenly checked herself, and her eye which had been sparkling grew quiet.
”It is very absurd!” said Mr. Stackpole.
”Why, Sir?”
”Oh, these people have nothing to do with such things ? do them nothing but harm!”
”May I ask again, what harm?” said Fleda, gently.
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