H. B. Marriott Watson

“ She cast a curious glance at me. "It is a standard, at any rate," she asserted, "and not nothing."
"Women," said I, nursing my knee, and fixing a sententious but appealing eye on Miss Fuller, "women are given to high ideals. They are fond of climbing about on giddy precipices where man, frail man, is afraid to follow them."
"That is sarcastic," observed Perdita, primly. ”

“ I said, "to have plunged recklessly and lost, and to be beset by creditors and reduced to a pitiful case. He is obliged ingloriously to avoid his fellow men, to run in shame around corners, and to dodge pieces of blue paper."
I was conscious now that I was painting Norroy in somewhat theatrical colors, as it were a poster for the hoardings. But I had my reward. Perdita looked pensive and saddened at the picture. Her tender heart was touched. Besides, she had just professed charity.
"Still, I should say to such a man 'Hope and be strong,'" she said in a voice charged with feeling. ”

“ Perdita examined me with earnest and innocent eyes, but what she decided I don't know. She changed the conversation by a remark to Miss Fuller. I suspected that I ought to be going, but I did n't want to go. I had n't really done justice to Eustace. I awaited my chance and deftly drew the conversation back—not to him specifically, but to men in general.
We are a poor lot," I declared, lumping all of us together, "and under our visible obsessions we descend to the bottomless pit. Wisdom is fled to brutish beasts, and divine justice inhabits only the hearts of women, where it is locked up." ”

“ But he had better instincts at bottom, probably."
"Yes," said Perdita, with manifest interest.
"Consider him much of a fool, if you like, but a decent fool who has had no nursing, a man of downright ineffectual good nature, and the taste for popularity. He gives away with both hands, and he cannot tell his friends from his foes. He is born, in fact, to be preyed upon, unless he is rescued. ”

“ Portia looked out of Perdita's eyes. "There are friends," I agreed, "but how many? And may not a man outwear his friends' patience? I am speaking of a silly man, of a man you might wrinkle your nose at." Had she not already wrinkled her pretty nose at poor Eustace? ”

“ I grew confused, "I thought you believed in his innocence."
"Refusing to believe that he is mixed up in a crime is quite another matter from vouching for a person's respectability," she remarked decidedly. ”