Kendal. 'You must
believe in more than you can trace, and when your perseverance has
conquered his esteem, the rest will follow.'
'Follow? The rest, as you call it, would go before at home,' sighed
Ulick, wearily. 'Esteem is like fame! what I want begins without it,
and lives as well with or without it!'
'Perhaps,' said his friend, 'Mr. Goldsmith would think it weakness to
show preference to a relation before it was earned.'
'Ah then,' cried Ulick, in a quaint Irish tone, 'Heaven have mercy on
the little children!'
'Yes, the doctrine can only be consistently held by a solitary man.'
'Where would we be but for inconsistency?' exclaimed Ulick.
'I do not like to hear you talk in that manner,' said Sophy.
'Inconsistency is mere weakness.'
'Ah! then you are the dangerous character,' said Ulick, with a droll
gesture of sheltering himself behind the chair.
'I did not call myself consistent, I wish I were,' she said, gravely.
'How she must love the French!' returned Ulick, confidentially
turning to her father.
'Not at all, I detest them.'
'Then you are inconsistent, for they're the very models of
uncompromising consistency.'
'Yes, to bad principles,' said Sophy.
'Robespierre was a prime specimen of consistency to good principle!'
Sophy turned to her father, and with an odd dubious look, asked him,
'Is be teasing me?'
'He'd be proud to have the honour,' Ulick made answer, so that Mr.
Pages:
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439