"Do you expect to travel about the Continent for nothing, K. I.?" said I. "Does your experience say that it costs so little?"
"No, faith!" replied he, with that sardonic grin that almost kills me, "I can't say that."
"Well, then," said I, "is it better for us to go about the world unnoticed and unknown, or to be visited and received, and made much of everywhere? The name of Dodd," said I, "is n't a great recommendation; and there 's some of us, at least, that have n't the exterior of the first fashion." I wish you saw how he fidgeted when I said this. "And as the great question is, What did we come abroad for?--"
"Ay, that's exactly it!" cried he, thumping his clenched fist on the table with a smash that made me scream out. "What did we come abroad for?"
"There 's no need to drive all the blood to my head, Mr. Dodd," said I, "to ask that. Though I am accustomed to your violence, my constitution may sink under it at last; but if you wish to know seriously and calmly why we came abroad, I 'll tell you."
"Do, then," said he, folding his arms in front of him, "and I'll be mighty thankful for the information."
"We came abroad," said I, "first of all, for--"
"It was n't economy," said he, with a grin.
"I'm glad of that," cried he. "I'm glad that we've got rid of one delusion, at least. Now, then, go on."
"Maybe you 'll call refinement a delusion, Mr. Dodd," said I. "Maybe politeness and good-breeding, the French language and music are delusions? Is high society a delusion? Is the sphere we move in a delusion?"
"I am disposed to think it is, Mrs. D.," said he, "and a very great delusion too. It's like nothing we were ever used to. It is not social, and it is not friendly. It has nothing to say, nor any concern with a single topic, or any one theme that we can care for. Do you know one, or can you even remember the names of any of the princes and princesses you are always discussing? Do you really care whether Mademoiselle Zephyrini's pirouette was steadier than Miss Angelina's? Does it concern you that somebody with a hard name has given the first-class order of the Pig and Whistle to somebody else, with a harder? Is it the meat stewed to rags you like, or the reputations with morality boiled out of them? Is it pleasant to think that, wherever you go, you meet nothing wholesome for mind or for body? I can stand scandal and wickedness as well as my neighbors, but I can't spend my life upon them, nor can I give up the whole day to dominos. You ask me what are delusions, and I tell you now some things that are not."