For it was the year of the Abyssinian disasters; and the carnage of Adowa
was not yet two months old.

Lucy's expression showed her sympathy.

'What makes him--'

'Take such a twisted sort of a line? O goodness! what makes Manisty do
anything? Of course, I oughtn't to talk. I'm just an understrapper--and
he's a man of genius,--more or less--we all know that. But what made him
do what he did last year? I say it was because his chief--he was in the
Education Office you know--was a Dissenter, and a jam manufacturer, and had
mutton-chop whisker. Manisty just couldn't do what he was told by a man
like that. He's as proud as Lucifer. I once heard him tell a friend of mine
that he didn't know how to obey anybody--he'd never learnt. That's because
they didn't send him to a public school--worse luck; that was his mother's
doing, I believe. She thought him so clever--he must be treated differently
to other people. Don't you think that's a great mistake?'

'What?'

'Why--to prefer the cross-cuts, when you might stick to the high road?'

The American girl considered. Then she flashed into a smile.--

'I think I'm for the cross-cuts!'

'Ah--that's because you're American. I might have known you'd say that. All
your people want to go one better than anybody else. But I can tell you it
doesn't do for Englishmen. They want their noses kept to the grindstone.