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"You say it with so much conviction," was the retort, "that you must have known it before." "But I do not know it. I deny such knowledge. Where could I have learned such a principle?" He spread out his arms in emphatic denial. For he was quick in all his gestures quick to laugh or be grave quick, with the rapidity of a woman to catch a thought held back by silence or concealed in speech.
He abused the lad's multifarious reading, declared it was no better than dram-drinking, and even preached to him an ingenious variety of mechanical aids to memory and short cuts to knowledge, till Robert would turn round upon him with some triumphant retort drawn from his own utterances at some sincerer and less discreet moment. In vain.
Kate tore her passion to tatters, then succumbed to exhaustion. But she did not fling out of the room, and this Emma knew to be a hopeful sign. The opportunity of strong, placid speech at length presented itself, and Emma used it well. She did not succeed in eliciting a promise, but when she declared her confidence in her sister's better self, Kate made no retort, only sat in stubborn muteness.
Kitty Wade, turning her head to retort, surprised a quiet, enigmatic smile on Clyde's face. Their eyes met, and keen question and defiant answer leaped across the glance. Kitty Wade let the retort remain unspoken, and contemplated the nigh chestnut's ears, for her husband's last words had given her a clew. "Oh, Clyde Burnaby, Clyde Burnaby!" she said to herself with a little shake of the head.
Flower would retort. "Don't flatter yourself, old girl. I've got my eye on two or three fine young women who'll be glad of the job, I assure you;" but this, perhaps, proving too much for poor Mrs. Flower, whose tears were never far away, and apt to require smelling-salts, he would change his tone in an instant and say, dropping into his Derbyshire "thous,"
Though theoretically correct, it was open to an objection, which was urged by Bonaparte and Talleyrand with suave yet incisive irony. This retort was not so terrible as it appeared; for most of the papers necessary for the making up of the French counterclaim had been lost or destroyed during the Revolution.
There was an accent of admiration in his exclamation, "You dare-devil!" "I'm not daring you, general, and if I was, you are not a devil, only a debtor." The dignity of Wilkinson could not suffer further saucy retort or question. "This farce must end. I cannot bandy words with such as you. Not another dollar shall you receive from me not a penny. You had my final word at Massac, last Spring.
We often see this ludicrously exemplified, even in the trivial matter of near-sightedness. We are almost always a little vexed, when we point out a distant object to a friend, and hear him reply, "No, I do not see it at all. I am near-sighted." "What! can't you see that far?" is the frequent retort, and in the pity is a dash of impatience.
I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It's my misfortun'. I really couldn't help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up. 'I an't what I could wish myself to be, said Mrs. Gummidge.
She paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it. What he asked was impossible and she gloried in his asking it. Feeling her power, she tried to temporize. "At least if you stayed we could be friends I shouldn't feel so terribly alone." He laughed impatiently. "Don't talk magazine stuff to me, Undine Spragg. I guess we want each other the same way. Only our ideas are different.
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