“Are you then dissatisfied with your profession?”
“No — I don’t mean that. I am always saying stupid things.”
“Yes. That comes of your ignorance of a sex accustomed to have its silliness respected. You will find it hard to keep on good terms with my friend without some further study of womanly ways.”
“As to her, I won’t give in that I’m wrong unless I AM wrong. The truth’s the truth.”
“Not even to please Miss Goff?”
“Not even to please you. You’d only think the worse of me afterwards.”
“Quite true, and quite right,” said Lydia, cordially. “Goodbye, Mr. Cashel Byron. I must rejoin Miss Goff.”
“I suppose you will take her part if she keeps a down on me for what I said to her.”
“What is ‘a down’? A grudge?”
“Yes. Something of that sort.”
“Colonial, is it not?” pursued Lydia, with the air of a philologist.
“Yes; I believe I picked it up in the colonies.” Then he added, sullenly, “I suppose I shouldn’t use slang in speaking to you. I beg your pardon.”
“I do not object to it. On the contrary, it interests me. For example, I have just learned from it that you have been in Australia.”
“So I have. But are you out with me because I annoyed Miss Goff?”
“By no means. Nevertheless, I sympathize with her annoyance at the manner, if not the matter, of your rebuke.”
“I can’t, for the life of me, see what there was in what I said to raise such a fuss about. I wish you would give me a nudge whenever you see me making a fool of myself. I will shut up at once and ask no questions.”
“So that it will be understood that my nudge means ‘Shut up, Mr. Cashel Byron; you are making a fool of yourself’?”
“Just so. YOU understand me. I told you that before, didn’t I?”
“I am afraid,” said Lydia, her face bright with laughter, “that I cannot take charge of your manners until we are a little better acquainted.”
He seemed disappointed. Then his face clouded; and he began, “If you regard it as a liberty—”
“Of course I regard it as a liberty,” she said, neatly interrupting him. “Is not my own conduct a sufficient charge upon my attention? Why should I voluntarily assume that of a strong man and learned professor as well?”
“By Jingo!” exclaimed Cashel, with sudden excitement, “I don’t care what you say to me. You have a way of giving things a turn that makes it a pleasure to be shut up by you; and if I were a gentleman, as I ought to be, instead of a poor devil of a professional pug, I would—” He recollected himself, and turned quite pale. There was a pause.
“Let me remind you,” said Lydia, composedly, though she too had changed color at the beginning of his outburst, “that we are both wanted elsewhere at present; I by Miss Goff, and you by your servant, who has been hovering about us and looking at you anxiously for some minutes.”
Cashel turned fiercely, and saw Mellish standing a little way off, sulkily watching him. Lydia took the opportunity, and left the place. As she retreated she could hear that they were at high words together; but she could not distinguish what they were saying. Fortunately so; for their language was villainous.
She found Alice in the library, seated bolt upright in a chair that would have tempted a goodhumored person to recline. Lydia sat down in silence. Alice, presently looking at her, discovered that she was in a fit of noiseless laughter. The effect, in contrast to her habitual self-possession, was so strange that Alice almost forgot to be offended.
“I am glad to see that it is not hard to amuse you,” she said.
Lydia waited to recover herself thoroughly, and then replied, “I have not laughed so three times in my life. Now, Alice, put aside your resentment of our neighbor’s impudence for the moment, and tell me what you think of him.”
“I have not thought about him at all, I assure you,” said Alice, disdainfully.
“Then think about him for a moment to oblige me, and let me know the result.”
“Really, you have had much more opportunity of judging than I. I have hardly spoken to him.”
Lydia rose patiently and went to the bookcase. “You have a cousin at one of the universities, have you not?” she said, seeking along the shelf for a volume.
“Yes,” replied Alice, speaking very sweetly to atone for her want of amiability on the previous subject.
“Then perhaps you know something of university slang?”
“I never allow him to talk slang to me,” said Alice, quickly.
“You may dictate modes of expression to a single man, perhaps, but not to a whole university,” said Lydia, with a quiet scorn that brought unexpected tears to Alice’s eyes. “Do you know what a pug is?”
“A pug!” said Alice, vacantly. “No; I have heard of a bulldog — a proctor’s bulldog, but never a pug.”
“I must try my slang dictionary,” said Lydia, taking down a book and opening it. “Here it is. ‘Pug — a fighting man’s idea of the contracted word to be produced from pugilist.’ What an extraordinary definition! A fighting man’s idea of a contraction! Why should a man have a special idea of a contraction when he is fighting; or why should he think of such a thing at all under such circumstances? Perhaps ‘fighting man’ is slang too. No; it is not given here. Either I mistook the word, or it has some signification unknown to the compiler of my dictionary.”
“It seems quite plain to me,” said Alice. “Pug means pugilist.”
“But pugilism is boxing; it is not a profession. I suppose all men are more or less pugilists. I want a sense of the word in which it denotes a calling or occupation of some kind. I fancy it means a demonstrator of anatomy. However, it does not matter.”
“Where did you meet with it?”
“Mr. Byron used it just now.”
“Do you really like that man?” said Alice, returning to the subject more humbly than she had quitted it.
“So far, I do not dislike him. He puzzles me. If the roughness of his manner is an affectation I have never seen one so successful before.”
“Perhaps he does not know any better. His coarseness did not strike me as being affected at all.”
“I should agree with you but for one or two remarks that fell from him. They showed an insight into the real nature of scientific knowledge, and an instinctive sense of the truths underlying words, which I have never met with except in men of considerable culture and experience. I suspect that his manner is deliberately assumed in protest against the selfish vanity which is the common source of social polish. It is partly natural, no doubt. He seems too impatient to choose his words heedfully. Do you ever go to the theatre?”
“No,” said Alice, taken aback by this apparent irrelevance. “My father disapproved of it. But I was there once. I saw the ‘Lady of Lyons.’”
“There is a famous actress, Adelaide Gisborne—”
“It was she whom I saw as the Lady of Lyons. She did it beautifully.”
“Did Mr. Byron remind you of her?”
Alice stared incredulously at Lydia. “I do not think there can be two people in the world less like one another,” she said.
“Nor