"Really you make me out as incorrigible a self-excuser as the heroine
of Miss Edgeworth's juvenile tales; though even she chanced upon a
good excuse occasionally. Come, try me, and see what I can urge in my
own defense."

"Well, then, I ask you, _à la Godfrey_, what you were thinking of
when you, who had an ailing lady in your cart, drove directly over the
largest rock you have seen in a week?"

"In the first place, I did not see it. You need not look quite so
incredulous; I assure you I did not."

"That is very evident, but no excuse at all. Pray, where were your
eyes?"

"Where nature intended them to be, I suppose."

"Nonsense! why didn't you use them?"

"Because I have not the faculty of looking two ways at once,
like Brahma; and my optics were irresistibly drawn in an opposite
direction."

"A truce to all such excuses!"

"Patience, Miss Florence, hear me only once more. The reason is, that
I was looking at your cousin over there, and calculating the chances
of her surviving suffocation."