Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/332

THE BETTER SORT were doing which none but the vulgar-minded altogether avoid. "People—as I see them—would almost rather be jabbered about unpleasantly than not be jabbered about at all: whenever you try them—whenever, at least, I do—I'm confirmed in that conviction. It isn't only that if one holds out the mere tip of the perch they jump at it like starving fish; it is that they leap straight out of the water themselves, leap in their thousands and come flopping, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed, to one's very door. What is the sense of the French expression about a person's making des yeux de carpe? It suggests the eyes that a young newspaperman seems to see all round him, and I declare I sometimes feel that, if one has the courage not to blink at the show, the gilt is a good deal rubbed off the gingerbread of one's early illusions. They all do it, as the song is at the music-halls, and it's some of one's surprises that tell one most. You've thought there were some high souls that didn't do it—that wouldn't, I mean, to work the oracle, lift a little finger of their own. But, Lord bless you, give them a chance—you'll find some of the greatest the greediest. I give you my word for it, I haven't a scrap of faith left in a single human creature. Except, of course," the young man added, "the grand creature that you are, and the cold, calm, comprehensive one whom you thus admit to your familiarity. Weface the music. We see, we understand; we know we've got to live, and how we do it. But at least, like this, alone together, we take our intellectual revenge, we escape the indignity of being fools dealing with fools. I don't say we shouldn't enjoy it more if we were. But it can't be helped; we haven't the gift—the gift, I mean, of not seeing. We do the worst we can for the money."

"You certainly do the worst you can," Maud Blandy soon replied, "when you sit there, with your wanton wiles, and take the spirit out of me. I require a 320