.

But please, my dear fellow, don't clap into _my_ mouth that silliest of phrases.

'Accident of birth!' I once heard parturition pleaded as an accident--by a servant girl in trouble.
Funny sort of accident, hey?
Does ever anyone--did she, your own daughter, for example--come into this world fortuitously ?" Brother Copas, taking snuff, did not perceive the twitch of his friend's face.

His question seemed to pluck Brother Bonaday up short, as though with the jerk of an actual rope.
"Maybe," he harked back vaguely, "it's just caprice--the inconsequence of a child's mind--the mystery of it, some would say." "Fiddlestick-end! There's as much mystery in Corona as in the light of day about us at this moment; just so much and no more.
If anything, she's deadly logical; when her mind puzzles us it's never by hocus-pocus, but simply by swiftness in operation.

.