A Figure of Speech
Though I sometimes lay down the law myself on public questions, I don’t very much care to hear other people do it. The heavy talker, however, who was now holding forth about finance, showed such a grasp of his subject, and made such mincemeat of a rash opponent, that I thought it best, for the moment, to say nothing.
‘So what you allege,’ he triumphed in his overbearing manner, ‘is perfectly irrelevant. My withers are unwrung. It does not affect my position in the least.’
And then I lightly flung my Goliath pebble. ‘Withers?’ I ingenuously asked, ‘what are the withers, anyhow?’
He turned on me a glance of anger and contempt. ‘Withers—why the withers—’ ‘It’s only—only a figure of speech,’ he stammered.
‘Oh!’ I said, with a look at the company full of suggestion, ‘a figure of speech—I see.’