"Now, you ain't fair to _me_, grannie. Not avin' of my heyesight like the rest on ye, I may be a bit fond of a harguyment; but I tries to hit fair, and when I hears what ain't logic, I can no more help comin' down upon it than I can help breathin' the air o' heaven. And why shouldn't I? There ain't no law agin a harguyment. An' more an' over, it do seem to me as how you and Mr. Jarvis is wrong i' _it is_ harguyment." "If I was too sharp upon you, Mr. Evans, and I may have been," said Marion, "I beg your pardon." "It's granted, grannie." "I don't mean, you know, that I give in to what you say,--not one bit." "I didn't expect it of you. I'm a-waitin' here for you to knock me down." "I don't think a mere victory is worth the breath spent upon it," said Marion. "But we should all be glad to get or give more light upon any subject, if it be by losing ever so many arguments. Allow me just to put a question or two to Mr. Jarvis, because he's a joiner himself--and that's a great comfort to me to-night: What would you say, Mr. Jarvis, of a master who planed the timber he used for scaffolding, and tied the crosspieces with ropes of silk?" "I should say he was a fool, grannie,--not only for losin' of his money and his labor, but for weakenin' of his scaffoldin',--summat like the old throne-maker i' that chapter, I should say." "What's the object of a scaffold, Mr. Jarvis?" "To get at something else by means of,--say build a house." "Then, so long as the house was going up all right, the probability is there wouldn't be much amiss with the scaffold?" "Certainly, provided it stood till it was taken down." "And now, Mr. Evans," she said next, turning to the blind man, "I am going to take the liberty of putting a question or two to you." "All right, grannie. Fire away." "Will you tell me, then, what the object of this world is?" "Well, most people makes it their object to get money, and make theirselves comfortable." "But you don't think that is what the world was made for?" "Oh! as to that, how should I know, grannie? And not knowin', I won't say." "If you saw a scaffold," said Marion, turning again to Jarvis, "would you be in danger of mistaking it for a permanent erection?" "Nobody wouldn't be such a fool," he answered. "The look of it would tell you that." "You wouldn't complain, then, if it should be a little out of the square, and if there should be no windows in it?" Jarvis only laughed. "Mr. Evans," Marion went on, turning again to the blind man, "do you think the design of this world was to make men comfortable?" "If it was, it don't seem to ha' succeeded," answered Evans. "And you complain of that--don't you?" "Well, yes, rather,"--said the blind man, adding, no doubt, as he recalled the former part of the evening's talk,--"for harguyment, ye know, grannie."