Verily, I have heard this often, and yet I think I am more
surprised to find it true than if I had never been warned! But that is
always the way. Things surprise us just as much as we expect them to.
When we went up the river to Canton and saw the Pagoda, we all
exclaimed, 'Why, it is just like the pictures--river, and junks, and
all!' If we had not seen the pictures I believe we should scarcely have
noticed it, and certainly we should not have been surprised at all."
"Haven't you done being surprised yet?" Lorrimer asked.
"No. Have you?"
"Quite. Nothing ever surprises me."
"I have read somewhere," she said, trying hard to recall the passage,
"that fast men, stupid men (_I think_), and rascals, profess to
feel no surprise at anything."
The colour flew over his face, he seemed about to speak, but took up
his pen again as if the thing were not worth the trouble of a word,
and went on with his work. The habit of treating men as ideas is not
to be got rid of in a moment, and it was only when she thought it over
at dinner this evening that she saw anything to hurt him in what she
had said.
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