I might, at all events, for all I know, be abject under a blow.

How can I tell?
Do you realise, father, that I've never had the least blow ?" He gave her a long, quiet look.

"Who SHOULD realise if I don't ?" "Well, you'll realise when I HAVE one!" she exclaimed with a short laugh that resembled, as for good reasons, his own of a minute before.

"I wouldn't in any case have let her tell me what would have been dreadful to me.

For such wounds and shames are dreadful: at least," she added, catching herself up, "I suppose they are; for what, as I say, do I know of them?
I don't WANT to know!"-- she spoke quite with vehemence.