His Grace — page 108: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

102 HIS GRACE. can tell you. Lucky it was no worse! That young gabby was trying to skate backwards, Isuppose. Well, he won’t attempt to do such a thing again, unless he has the whole lake to himself, you may be sure. It isn’t likely that he will be. allowed to forget to-day’s performance.” As a matter of fact, I believe that the poor young man never has been allowed to forget it. In quiet rural neighborhoods the memory of all performances, whether good or bad, is apt to die hard, and public indignation had been powerfully aroused by this mishap to a lady who, as I think I have mentioned be- fore, had known how to make herself popular. How- ever, we did all we could to convince him that we bore no malice: Nora insisted upon sending for him before we took her home, in order that he might see for him- self how little she had suffered from an unavoidable collision: even Hurstbourne, whom we encountered on our way back, and who expressed extreme joy on finding that his apprehensions had been exaggerated, went so far as to promise that he would not break the stupid idiot’s head. [ should not be telling the truth, were I to deny that I myself felt a strong inclination, in the course of the same evening, to break the head of another stupid idiot, and that that head was placed above the shoulders of the Duke of Hurstbourne. Of course his conduct had been due to mere stupidity and idiocy; of course he had no serious intentions; of course he would have been horrified at the idea of breaking a rustic maiden’s heart for his amusement; and of course two-thirds of the cruelty that is committed in this world is uninten- tional cruelty. That is just the provoking part of it. Eomichoo cS (E(@) m