Jeremy did not care much about Mrs. Mumple's approval, though he tried his arguments on her as a boxer tries his fists on a stuffed sack (she suggested the simile). He did not expect to convince her, and would have been rather sorry if he had. In her present mental condition she was invaluable as a warning and a butt. But it was exasperating that Mrs. Hutting should hold antique, ludicrous, and (in his opinion) in the end debased views about social intercourse between the sexes--in fact (to descend to that concrete which Jeremy's soul abhorred) about girls of seventeen taking walks with young men of twenty-two. Mrs. Hutting's views on this point imposed on Jeremy proceedings which he felt to be unbecoming to a philosopher. He had to scheme, to lie in wait, to plan most unlikely accidents, on occasion to palter with truth, to slip behind a waggon or to hide inside a barn. A recognition on Mrs. Hutting's part of nature, of facts, and of development would have relieved Jeremy from all these distasteful expedients. But Mrs. Hutting was an old-fashioned woman. She obeyed her husband--usually, however, suggesting on what points he might reasonably require obedience. She expected her daughter to obey her. And she had her views, which she had enforced in a very quiet but a very firm way. Modern tendencies were not in favour at the rectory; that being established as a premise, it followed that anything which was disapproved of at the rectory was a modern tendency; wherefore clandestine and spuriously accidental meetings between young men and young women were a modern tendency, or, anyhow, signs of one--and of a very bad one too. No ancient instances would have shaken Mrs. Hutting on this point; the train of logic was too strong. Certainly Dora never tried to shake her mother's judgment, or to break the chain. For Dora was old-fashioned too. She admitted that clandestine and spuriously accidental meetings were wrong. But sometimes the clandestine character or the spuriousness of the accident could be plausibly questioned; besides, a thing may be wrong, and yet not be so very, very bad. And the thing may be such fun and so amusing that--well, one goes and tries not to be found out. On these ancient but not obsolete lines Miss Dora framed her conduct, getting thereby a spice of excitement and a fearful joy which no duly licensed encounters could have given her. But she had no doubt that Mrs. Hutting was quite right. Anna Selford's critical attitude towards her parents was not in the rectory way. "Suppose she'd seen us!" Dora whispered behind the barn, as the rectory pony-chaise rolled slowly by. "We're doing nothing wrong. I should like to walk straight out and say so." "If you do, I'll never speak to you again." "I hate this--this dodging!" "Then why don't you take your walks the other way? You know I come here. Why do you come if you feel like that about it?"