Oddly enough, when the
speaker was no longer in front of them, there seemed to be much that
was suggestive in what he had said. At any rate, a pale-faced young
man with sad eyes was already on his feet, delivering an accurately
worded speech with perfect composure. William Rodney listened with a
curious lifting of his upper lip, although his face was still
quivering slightly with emotion.
"Idiot!" he whispered. "He's misunderstood every word I said!"
"Well then, answer him," Katharine whispered back.
"No, I shan't! They'd only laugh at me. Why did I let you persuade me
that these sort of people care for literature?" he continued.
There was much to be said both for and against Mr. Rodney's paper. It
had been crammed with assertions that such-and-such passages, taken
liberally from English, French, and Italian, are the supreme pearls of
literature. Further, he was fond of using metaphors which, compounded
in the study, were apt to sound either cramped or out of place as he
delivered them in fragments. Literature was a fresh garland of spring
flowers, he said, in which yew-berries and the purple nightshade
mingled with the various tints of the anemone; and somehow or other
this garland encircled marble brows.
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