That one had duties of kindness towards the lower creation appealed to her as a totally new idea.
Supposing the dog had broken all its legs and ribs, would she not have been sorry?
She answered frankly in the negative.

It was a nasty little dog.

If she had hurt it badly, so much the better.

What did it matter if a dog was hurt?
She was sorry now she had hurled it into space, because it belonged to my friends, and that had made me cross with her.
Of course I was shocked at the thoughtless cruelty of the action; but my anger had also its roots in dismay at the public scandal it might have caused, and in the discovery that I was known to the victim's owner.
It is the sad fate of the instructors of youth that they must hypocritically credit themselves with only the sublimest of motives.

I spoke to Carlotta like the good father in the "Swiss Family Robinson." I gave vent to such noble sentiments that in a quarter of an hour I glowed with pride in my borrowed plumes of virtue.