" Warrington asked,
his face turning rather red. "Would you let any woman you loved be
contaminated by their company? I have no doubt that the poor Begum is
ignorant of their histories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great
number of better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not
a lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had the
education, or learned the refinements of a lady."

"She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls,
and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the King's English, and has half
a dozen dukes at her table," Pen answered, rather sulkily. "Why should
you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are we to
visit the sins of her father on this harmless kind creature? She never
did anything but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as she knows
she does her best. She does not set up to be more than she is. She gives
you the best dinners she can buy, and the best company she can get. She
pays the debts of that scamp of a husband of hers. She spoils her boy
like the most virtuous mother in England. Her opinion about literary
matters, to be sure, is not much; and I daresay she never read a line of
Wordsworth, or heard of Tennyson in her life."

"No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress," growled out Pen's Mentor; "no
more has Betty the housemaid; and I have no word of blame against them.
But a high-souled man doesn't make friends of these. A gentleman doesn't
choose these for his companions, or bitterly rues it afterwards if
he do. Are you, who are setting up to be a man of the world and a
philosopher, to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle three courses
and dine off silver? Do you dare to own to yourself that your ambition
in life is good claret, and that you'll dine with any, provided you
get a stalled ox to feed on? You call me a Cynic--why, what a monstrous
Cynicism it is, which you and the rest of you men of the world admit!
I'd rather live upon raw turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn
backwoodsman or savage, than degrade myself to this civilisation, and
own that a French cook was the thing in life best worth living for."

"Because you like a raw beefsteak and a pipe afterwards," broke out Pen,
"you give yourself airs of superiority over people whose tastes are more
dainty, and are not ashamed of the world they live in. Who goes about
professing particular admiration, or esteem, or friendship, or gratitude
even, f