I half learned, half
discovered things that tended to give me what some would count
severe notions: I count them common sense. Then, as you know, I
went into service, and in that position it is easy enough to gather
that many people hold very loose and very nasty notions about some
things; so I just wanted to see how you felt about such. If I had
a sister now, and saw a man coming to woo her, all beclotted with
puddle filth--or if I knew that he had just left some woman as
good as she, crying eyes and heart out over his child--I don't
know that I could keep my hands off him--at least if I feared she
might take him. What do you think now? Mightn't it be a righteous
thing to throttle the scum and be hanged for it?"
"Well," said Lenorme, "I don't know why I should justify myself,
especially where no charge is made, MacPhail; and I don't know why
to you any more than another man; but at this moment I am weak, or
egotistic, or sympathetic enough to wish you to understand that, so
far as the poor matter of one virtue goes, I might without remorse
act Sir Galahad in a play."
"Now you are beyond me," said Malcolm. "I don't know what you mean."
So Lenorme had to tell him the old Armoric tale which Tennyson has
since rendered so lovelily, for, amongst artists at least, he was
one of the earlier borrowers in the British legends.
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