yourself. You appear to me to be the very touchstone
of responsibility. When I see you, my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the
perfect working of the whole little orderly system of which you are the centre,
I feel inclined to say to myself - in fact I do say to myself, very often -
that's responsibility!«
    It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I persisted so
far as to say, that we all hoped he would check and not confirm Richard in the
sanguine views he entertained just then.
    »Most willingly,« he retorted, »if I could. But, my dear Miss Summerson, I
have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand, and leads me through
Westminster Hall in an airy procession after Fortune, I must go. If he says,
Skimpole, join the dance! I must join it. Common sense wouldn't, I know; but I
have no common sense.«
    »It was very unfortunate for Richard,« I said.
    »Do you think so!« returned Mr. Skimpole. »Don't say that, don't say that.
Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense - an excellent man - a good
deal wrinkled - dreadfully practical - change for a ten-pound note in every
pocket-ruled account - book in his hand - say, upon the whole, resembling a
tax-gatherer. Our dear Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles,
bursting with poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable
companion, I see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very
beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape to come at
it! The respectable companion instantly knocks him down with the ruled
account-book; tells him, in a literal prosaic way, that he sees no such thing;
shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you
know that's a painful change; - sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt,
but disagreeable. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled account-book, I have
none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not at all
respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it is!«
    It was idle to say more; so I proposed that we should join Ada and Richard,
who were a little