BRASSBOUND. You forget that I am like my uncle, according to you.
Have you any doubt as to the reality of HIS badness?
LADY CICELY. Bless me! your uncle Howard is one of the most
harmless of men--much nicer than most professional people. Of
course he does dreadful things as a judge; but then if you take a
man and pay him 5,000 pounds a year to be wicked, and praise him
for it, and have policemen and courts and laws and juries to drive
him into it so that he can't help doing it, what can you expect?
Sir Howard's all right when he's left to himself. We caught a
burglar one night at Waynflete when he was staying with us; and I
insisted on his locking the poor man up until the police came, in
a room with a window opening on the lawn. The man came back next
day and said he must return to a life of crime unless I gave him a
job in the garden; and I did. It was much more sensible than
giving him ten years penal servitude: Howard admitted it. So you
see he's not a bit bad really.
BRASSBOUND. He had a fellow feeling for a thief, knowing he was a
thief himself. Do you forget that he sent my mother to prison?
LADY CICELY (softly). Were you very fond of your poor mother, and
always very good to her?
BRASSBOUND (rather taken aback). I was not worse than other sons,
I suppose.
LADY CICELY (opening her eyes very widely). Oh! Was THAT all?
BRASSBOUND (exculpating himself, full of gloomy remembrances).
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