“Should he be just a man?” asked Kate, with profound gravity. “Shouldn’t they be examples to all of us? I think they should be kept apart from other people, and even look different. I should not like to be intimate--not very intimate, you know--with a clergyman. I should feel as if it was wrong--when they have to teach us, and pray for us, and all that. Your son is not a clergyman yet, or I should never have ventured to speak to him as I did to-day.” “But, you dear simple-minded child,” cried Mrs Mitford, half delighted with such an evidence of goodness, half confused by the thought of how this theory might affect her boy, “that is all very true; but unless they became monks at once, I don’t see how your notion could be carried out; and the experience of the Roman Catholics, dear, has shown us what a dreadful thing it is to make men monks. So that, you see, clergymen must mix in the world; and I am quite sure it is best for them to marry. When you consider how much a woman can do in a parish, Kate, and what a help she is, especially if her husband is very superior----” “I don’t know, I am sure,” said Kate; “perhaps, in that case, you know, women should be the clergymen. But I do think they should be put up upon pedestals, and one should not be too familiar with them. Marrying a clergyman would be dreadful. I don’t know how any one could have the courage to do it. I suppose people did not look at things in that light when you were young?” “No, indeed,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little warmth; “there were no High Church notions in my days. One thought one was doing the best one could for God, and that one had one’s work to do as well as one’s husband. And, my dear,” said the good woman, dropping into her usual soft humility, “I think you would think so, too, if you knew what the parish was when I came into it. Not that I have done much--not near so much, not half so much, as I ought to have done--but still, I think----” “As if I ever doubted that!” cried Kate; “but then--not many are like you.” “Oh yes, my dear! a great many,” said Mrs Mitford, with a smile of pleasure. “Even Mr Crediton’s pretty Kate, though he says she is a wilful little puss--if it came to be her fate to marry a clergyman----” “That it never can be,” said Kate; “oh, dear, no! In the first place, papa would hate it; and, in the next place, I should--hate it myself.” “Ah! my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, feeling, nevertheless, as if she had received a downright blow, “that all depends upon the man.”