"I know what you mean," said the Vicar uneasily. "I've sometimes almost thought the same myself. But I think it's only her manner. Personally I prefer her to the other two. She isn't so pretty, but----" "I don't deny Caroline and Beatrix's prettiness," said Rhoda. "Some girls might say they couldn't see it, but thank goodness I'm not a cat. Still, good looks, to please _me_, must have something behind them, or I've no use for them." "They're ill-natured--ill-natured and conceited," said Ethel. "That's what they are, and that's what spoils them. And the way they go on with their father! 'Darling' and 'dearest' and hanging round him all the time! It's all show-off. They don't act in that way to others." "I dare say Mr. Mercer wishes they did," said Rhoda, who was not altogether without humour, and also prided herself on her directness of speech. "Indeed not!" said the Vicar indignantly. "I quite agree with Miss Ethel. I dislike all that petting and kissing in company." "I only meant that they are not so sweet as all that inside," said Ethel. "I'm sure Rhoda and I did our best to make friends with them. They are younger than we are, of course, and we thought they might be glad to be taken notice of and helped to employ and interest themselves. But not at all. Oh, no. They came over here once, and nothing was good enough for them. They wouldn't do this, and they didn't care about doing that, and hadn't time to do the other. At last I said, 'Whatever _do_ you do with yourselves then, all day long? Surely,' I said, 'you take some interest in your fellow-creatures!'--we'd wanted them to do the same sort of thing at Abington as we do here, and offered to bicycle over there as often as they liked to help and advise them. Caroline looked at me, and said in a high and mighty sort of way, 'Yes we do; but we like making friends with them by degrees.' Well now, I call that simply shirking. If we had tried to run this parish on those lines--well, it wouldn't be the parish it is; that's all I can say." "They are of very little use in the parish," said the Vicar. "I tried to get them interested when they first came, and asked them to come about with me and see things for themselves, but I've long since given up all idea of that. And none of them will teach in the Sunday-school, where we really want teachers." "Yes, I suppose you do," said Rhoda. "Until Mollie Walter came I suppose you had hardly anybody. How do they get on with Mollie Walter, by the by? Or _don't_ they get on. She'd hardly be good enough for them, I suppose." "Far from that," said the Vicar, "they are spoiling Mollie completely. She used to be such a nice simple modest girl; well, you often said yourselves that you would like to have a girl like that to help you in the parish."