"Yes," said he, "that will be the end of it. You
relieve me of a weight. Really, when she told me that fable of learning
maltreated, honorable ambition punished, justice baffled by trickery, and
virtue vilified, and did not cry like the rest of you, except at her
father dying in New York the day she won her diploma at Montpelier, I
forgave the poor girl her petticoats; indeed, I lost sight of them. She
seemed to me a very brave little fellow, damnably ill used, and I said,
'This is not to be borne. Here is a fight, and justice down under dirty
feet.' What, ho!" (roaring at the top of his voice).
_Zoe and Fanny_ (screaming, and pinching Ned Severne right and left).
"Ah! ah!"
"Vizard to the rescue!"
"But, with the evening, cool reflection came. A sister, youthful, but
suddenly sagacious (with a gleam of suspicion), very suddenly has stilled
the waves of romance, and the lips of beauty have uttered common sense.
Shall they utter it in vain? Never! It may be years before they do it
again. We must not slight rare phenomena. Zoe _locuta est--_Eccentricity
must be suppressed. Doctresses, warned by a little starvation, must take
the world as it is, and teach little girls and boys languages, and physic
them with arithmetic and the globes: these be drugs that do not kill;
they only make life a burden.
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