"If he only would! What a shocking thing to say, but with me it is
always conscience who has the very hindmost word; and my conscience is
perfect mistress of the art of saying disagreeable things. At the
present moment she is trying to make me believe that I have been
unpardonably rude to you."

"She is mistaken then, for even if it were possible for you to be
rude, I could not fail to pardon you immediately."

"There! now you have had the best word. It is useless for me to try to
say anything better than that. Perhaps the most becoming thing I could
do would be to relapse into ignominious silence."

"Silence! Desolation! And with a two-mile pull yet before us! If I
have had the best word you have uttered the worst one. What so
terrible as silence?"

"It is said to be golden."

"And, like the gold that Robinson Crusoe discovered on his island, it
is of no particular use to anyone."

"It is one of the charms of Nature."

"A charm that I have never discovered. What about the ever-present hum
of multitudinous insects, the song of birds, the moan of winds, the
laughter of leaping water? It seems to me that Nature is all voice."

"Then, suppose," said the undaunted young lady, lifting her languorous
lids, "that we listen to her voice."