“My dear lady,” returned the schoolmaster, “when I have on good grounds made up my mind to a thing, I always feel as if I had promised God to do it; and indeed it amounts to the same thing very nearly. Such a resolve then is not to be unmade except on equally good grounds with those upon which it was made. Having resolved to try whether I could not draw a little water of refreshment for souls which if not thirsting are but fainting the more, shall I allow a few drops of rain to prevent me?” “Pray don’t let me persuade you against your will,” said his hostess, with a stately bend of her neck over her shoulder, as she turned into the drawing-room. Her guest went out into the rain, asking himself by what theory of the will his hostess could justify such a phrase---too simple to see that she had only thrown it out, as the cuttlefish its ink, to cover her retreat. But the weather had got a little into his brain: into his soul it was seldom allowed to intrude. He felt depressed and feeble and dull. But at the first corner he turned, he met a little breath of wind. It blew the rain in his face, and revived him a little, reminding him at the same time that he had not yet opened his umbrella. As he put it up he laughed. “Here I am,” he said to himself, “lance in hand, spurring to meet my dragon!” Once when he used a similar expression, Malcolm had asked him what he meant by his dragon; “I mean,” replied the schoolmaster, “that huge slug, _The Commonplace_. It is the wearifulest dragon to fight in the whole miscreation. Wound it as you may, the jelly-mass of the monster closes, and the dull one is himself again--feeding all the time so cunningly that scarce one of the victims whom he has swallowed suspects that he is but pabulum slowly digesting in the belly of the monster.”