Norah’s impassive face had not changed, but she interposed here: 

“Beg pardon, ma’am!  I’ve no thought of taking a hand with the washing.”

I was silly enough to go on with what I had tried to make so plain that the wayfaring “living-out girl” could not err in taking it in.  I was willing to train her in the duties of her station.  I set forth, and would have specified what these were, but for a second interruption that was evidently not intentionally disrespectful, and was uttered with the bovine stolidity that never forsook her.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but I’ve always understood that all that made a lady in Ameriky was eddercation, an’ shure I have that ’s well ’s you!”

She could read, or so I suppose, although I never saw a book in her hand, and could probably write, after the fashion of her class.

With a smile at my folly that struggled with a sigh over hers, I let her go.  It was my fault not hers, that I had bruised my fists thumping against a stone wall.  Had I discoursed to her in Bengalee she would have comprehended me no more imperfectly.  The doom of hopelessness was upon her.  She was not merely a fool, but had taken the full degree as a self-satisfied blockhead.  I deserved what I got—­and more of the same sort.

Of a different type—­being only a moderately conceited ignoramus, was an otherwise well-educated woman whom I heard discourse volubly upon ceramics and a valuable collection of old china she had picked up in a foreign town.  Among other kinds she named some choice bits of “faience.”

“Is not that used now as a general term for earthenware decorated with color?” asked a listener modestly.

“Oh, by no means!  It is never applied except to a particular and exceedingly rare sort of pottery,” went on the connoisseur.  “But perhaps you are not familiar with ceramic terms?”

“Not as familiar as I should be, I confess,” rejoined the other, gently regretful.

A couple of years later, I met the enthusiastic collector in the house of the other party to the dialogue, and learned with her that our hostess was renowned for her treasures of old china, and actually the author of a book upon ceramics.

“What must she have thought of me the day I made such a fool of myself!” moaned the humbled woman in a corner to me.  “And you know—­as I have learned since, as she knew all the time,—­that ‘faience’ is used as a generic term!  Well!  I have had my lesson in talking of what I do not understand.  How could she have answered me so civilly and gravely!”

I was too sorry for her to put into words the thought of the proverbial answer, “according to his folly.”  The incident had its moral and example for me too.  The recollection has beaten back many a vehement protest against egregious absurdity, and helped me endure with apparent composure even the patronage of fools.