She fixed her eyes on the slowly-receding enemy. "Well, in the first place, my dear, those old-fashioned habits become them marvelously."
"No use for that sort of kit myself," growled the hostile critic.
"Then they are so much a part of their horses they might be female centaurs."
"And about as amusing as female centaurs."
"But we are hunting for the positive, aren't we? We are trying 'to affirm something,' as Alf would say. Now those two and their horses are far grander works of art than anything that ever came out of Greece or Italy. It has taken millions of years to produce them and they are so perfect in their way that one wonders how they ever came to be produced at all."
"You might say that of anything or anybody—if you come to think of it."
"Of course. I agree. And so would Alf. And that's why universal love and admiration are so proper and natural."
"Wait till you are really up against 'em and then you'll see."
"The more I'm up against them—if I am to be up against them—the more I shall love and admire them, not for what they are perhaps, but for what they might be if only they'd take a little trouble over their parts in this wonderful Play, which I'm quite sure the Author meant to be so very much finer than we silly amateurs ever give it a chance of becoming."
The sunshade began to scratch the gravel again, while Jack Dinneford sighed over its owner's crude philosophy.
