As to the line he
took on the Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has always
been civil to me, and I don't see why I should spoil his sport.
For anything I can tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him than
she would be with any other man."
"Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you would rather
dine under the hedge than with Casaubon alone. You have nothing
to say to each other."
"What has that to do with Miss Brooke's marrying him? She does
not do it for my amusement."
"He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all
semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"Why does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying,"
said Sir James, with a disgust which he held warranted by the sound
feeling of an English layman.
"Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains.
They say, when he was a little boy, he made an abstract of
`Hop o' my Thumb,' and he has been making abstracts ever since.
Ugh! And that is the man Humphrey goes on saying that a woman may be
happy with."
"Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes," said the Rector. "I don't
profess to understand every young lady's taste."
"But if she were your own daughter?" said Sir James.
"That would be a different affair. She is _not_ my daughter,
and I don't feel called upon to interfere.
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