"Yes, if anything, rather more so," replied Dundas smiling. "She has, of course, been horribly badly treated according to her own account. It's an extraordinary thing how Julia always _is_ badly treated, and more extraordinary how she not only manages to survive, but actually fattens on it!" "Jove! I wish I had one half as good a time," grumbled Gerald. "She gets her three hundred a year without doing a hand's turn for it. I've got to slave like a nigger for mine." "'A judgment on you' says Julia, 'for all your wickedness.'" "Wickedness?--well, upon my soul, I like that. She's evidently lost none of her feline and back-biting propensities. I wish everyone had done as little in the way of wickedness, as she calls it, as I have--what do you say, Miriam?" "Well, Gerald; I agree it is not quite the word I should use to describe your shortcomings. Wickedness implies deliberation. No, I don't think your worst enemy could call you deliberately wicked." "Enemy? I haven't got any, my dear--your husband is the most popular of men." Miriam made no reply. "Tell me, Major," she said, "how is Mrs. Parsley? I haven't heard from her for ages. She and I used to be such good friends--she was always kind to me." "Another old cat," interpolated Gerald. "Oh, she's much the same," replied the Major; "meddlesome and well-meaning and good-hearted as ever. She's always most happy, you know, when she's got some philanthropic scheme in hand. Her last fad is really funny. She's got hold of a young street Arab, and has taken him in tow. Her idea is, I believe, to educate him and then send him amuck amongst his fellow-Arabs, in the hope that he may exude the Gospel--sort of spreading by contagion idea, you know." "Lord, that's just like her. Where did she get hold of the urchin?" "Well, they say she found him begging in the village. Little devil ought to be in a reformatory. I gave him some weeding to do round my place to oblige her, of course, but I couldn't stand the sight of him--preferred the weeds, so I sent him off. But he seems to have got round the old lady properly; and what's more, he's pocketing a good deal of her money, unless I'm very much mistaken. Oh, he's a sharp young beggar!" "But you don't mean to say she trusts him with money?" asked Miriam. It was not like Mrs. Parsley, as she remembered her, to do that. "Oh, I suppose the whole affair's a mere trifle. I only mentioned it to show how wrong-headed she is. This sort of indiscriminate charity does such a lot of harm." "She's as obstinate as a mule," put in Gerald. He hated the vicar's wife, she having snubbed him somewhat severely on one or two occasions. Indeed, it was only to the fact of her having married Gerald that Miriam could put down Mrs. Parsley's neglect of her since she had been in London. "And what is this precious brat's name?" he asked. Dundas looked puzzled.