peace, whatever she be a doin' now,
not _she_ didn't, pore thing. I was jest a tellin' the gentleman" (Dodge
indicated Professor Theobald with a backward movement of the thumb),
"about the schoolmarm. He was talkin' like a sermon--beautiful--about
the times wen the church was built; and about them as come over from
France and beat the English--shameful thing for our soldiers, 'pears to
me, not as I believes all them tales. Mr. Walker says as learnin' is a
pitfall, wich I don't swaller everything as Mr. Walker says neither.
Seems to me as it don't do to be always believin' wot's told yer, or
there's no sayin' wot sort o' things you wouldn't come to find inside o'
yer, before you'd done."

Hadria admitted the danger of indiscriminate absorption, but pointed out
that if caution were carried too far, one might end by finding nothing
inside of one at all, which also threatened to be attended with
inconvenience.

Dodge seemed to feel that the _desagrements_ in this last case were
trivial as compared with those of the former.

"Dodge is a born sceptic," said Lady Engleton. "What would you say,
Dodge, if some tiresome, reasonable person were to come and point out
something to you that you couldn't honestly deny, and yet that seemed to
upset all the ideas that you had felt were truest and best?"

Dodge scratched his head. "I should say as what he said wasn't true,"
replied Dodge.

"But if you couldn't help seeing that it was true?"

"That ud be arkard," Dodge admitted.

"Then what would you do?"

Dodge leant upon the broom-handle, apparently in profound thought. His
words were waited for.

"I think," he announced at last, "as I shouldn't do nothin' partic'lar."

"Dodge, you really are an oracle!" Hadria exclaimed. "What could more
simply describe the action of our Great Majority?"

"You are positively impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady
Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call
it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of
pure reason"--a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles of derision.

Joseph Fleming was looking longingly towards the grave, but his face was
resigned, for the Ancient Mariner had him button-holed securely.

"What _are_ they lingering for so long, I wonder?" cried Lady Engleton
impatiently. "Professor Theobald is really too instructive to-day. I
will go and hurry him."

Joseph welcomed her as his deliverer.

"I was merely wait