was completely taken aback, I assure you,
but the guide was so very positive----' And there followed such a number
of apologies that again I was bewildered, only retaining the one clear
impression that the bishop's wife desired exceedingly to be agreeable.

Well, a woman bent on being agreeable is better than a woman bent on
being disagreeable, though, being the soul of caution in my statements,
I must add, Not always; for I suppose few of us have walked any distance
along the path of life without having had to go at least some part of
the way in the company of persons who, filled with the praiseworthy wish
to be very pleasant, succeeded only in drenching our spirits with the
depressing torrents of effusion. And effusiveness applied to myself has
precisely the effect of a finger applied to the horns of a snail who
shall be innocently airing himself in the sun: he gets back without more
ado into his shell, and so do I.

That is what happened on this occasion. For some reason, which I could
only faintly guess, the bishop's wife after disapproving of me in the
morning was petting me in the afternoon. She had been lunching, she told
me, with Charlotte, and they had had a nice talk, she said, about me.
About me? Instantly I scrambled back into my shell. There is surely
nothing in the world so tiresome as being questioned, as I now was, on
one's household arrangements and personal habits. I will talk about
anything but that. I will talk with the courage of ignorance about all
high matters, of which I know nothing. I am ready to discourse on all or
any of the great Abstractions with the glibness of the shallow mind. I
will listen sympathetically to descriptions of diseases suffered and
operations survived, of the brilliance of sons and the beauty of
daughters. I will lend an attentive ear to an enumeration of social
successes and family difficulties, of woes and triumphs of every sort,
including those connected with kitchens; but I will not answer questions
about myself. And indeed, what is there to talk about? No one is
interested in my soul, and as for my body I long ago got tired of that.

One cannot, however, eat a person's rusks without assuming a certain
amount of subsequent blandness; so I did my best to behave nicely. Brosy
smoked cigarettes. Whatever it was that had sent me up in his mother's
estimation had apparently sent me down in his. He no longer, it seemed,
looked upon me as a good specimen of the intelligent G