my lecture delivered _extempore_?"

"Oh, vastly! but I did not know that was your style before. Don't
cultivate it, dear, if you hope to win manly hearts. Men like to do all
the lecturing themselves, and I find it diplomatic to feign profound
ignorance on all subjects outside of a bandbox; it delights them so to
enlighten us. No wonder they fancy us fools when we feign foolishness so
admirably--lapwings that we are!"

"But I never do, in such society. My experience is different from yours.
I always pretend to know twice as much as I do, when they are about; it
bluffs them off, and they are credulous sometimes as well as ignorant,
notwithstanding their boasted acumen."

"Your lamp of experience needs trimming, my pretty Miriam," she said,
shaking her head, "if you really believe this. They never forgive
superiority, assumed or real; none but the noble ones, I mean; who, of
course, are in the minority. Give a pair of tongs pantaloons, and it
asserts itself. Trousers, my dear, are at the root of manly presumption.
I discovered that long ago. A man in petticoats would be as humble as a
woman. This is my theory, at least; take it for what it is worth. And
now to sleep, with what heart we may, an iceberg being in our vicinity;"
and, taking my face in her hand, she kissed me cordially. "It is very
early in our acquaintance for such manifestations to be allowable," she
said, kindly, "but I am a sort of spoiled child of society, and dare to
be natural. I consider that the best privilege that attaches to my
condition, that of the 'bell-wether' of Savannah _ton_--the
universally-accepted bore! You know--Favraud has told you, of course; he
always characterizes as he goes."