anything one says.
Indeed, I am sure that he feels what one feels--for the time, at any
rate.

Clement is very different. He always disputes and often snubs what one
says; partly, I am sure, from a love of truth--a genuine desire to keep
himself and everybody else from talking in an unreal way, and from
repeating common ideas without thinking them out at first hand; and
partly, too, from what Keziah calls the "contradictiousness" of his
temper. He was in the room when Jack and I were talking, but he was not
talking with us. He was reading for his examination.

All the Arkwrights can work through noise and in company, having
considerable powers of mental abstraction. I think they even sometimes
combine attention to their own work with an occasional skimming of the
topics current in the room as well.

Some outlying feeler of Clement's brain caught my remark and Jack's
reply.

"My dear Margery," said he, "you are at heart one of the most unaffected
people I know. Pray be equally genuine with your head, and do not
encourage Jack in his slipshod habits of thought and conversation
by----"

"Slipshod!" interrupted Jack, holding his left arm out at full length
before him, the hand of which was shod with a fishing-boot. "Slipshod!
They fit as close as your convictions, and would be as stiff and
inexorable as logic if I didn't soften them with this newly-invented and
about-to-be-patented ointment by the warmth of a cheerful fire and
Margery's beaming countenance."

Clement had been reading during this sentence. Then he lifted his head,
and said pointedly:

"What I was going to advise _you_, Margery, is never to get into the
habit of adopting sentiments till you are quite sure you really mean
them. It is by the painful experience of my own folly that I know what
trouble it gives one afterwards. If ever the time comes when you want to
know your real opinion on any subject, the process of getting rid of
ideas you have adopted without meaning them will not be an easy one."

I am not as intellectual as the Arkwrights. I can always see through
Jack's jokes, but I am sometimes left far behind when Eleanor or Clement
"take flight," as Jack calls it, on serious subjects. I really did not
follow Clement on this occasion.

With some hesitation I said:

"I don't know that I quite understand."

"I'm sure you don't," said Jack. "I have feared for some time that your
hair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this househol