Bluemits's you
will take care to learn something by heart before you go. I'm sure I
haven't a very good memory, but I remember some things; and I was very
near going to repeat 'Farewell to Lochaber' myself, as we were coming
away; and I'm sure I wish to goodness I had done it; but I suppose it
wouldn't do to go back now; and at any rate all the ladies are away, and
I dare say the candles will be out by this time."
Mary felt it a relief to have done with this surfeit of soul, and was of
opinion that learning, like religion, ought never to be forced into
conversation; and that people who only read to talk of their reading
might as well let it alone. Next morning she gave so ludicrous an
account of her entertainment that Lady Emily was quite charmed.
"Now I begin to have hopes of you," said she, "since I see you can laugh
at your friends as well as me."
"Not at my friends, I hope," answered Mary; "only at folly."
"Call it what you will--I only wish I had been there. I should certainly
have started a controversy upon the respective merits of Tom Thumb and
Puss in Boots, and so have called them off Lord Byron. Their pretending
to measure the genius of a Scott or a Byron must have been something
like a fly attempting to take the altitude of Mont Blanc. How I detest
those idle disquisitions about the colour of a goat's beard, or the
blood of an oyster.
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