“Of course I questioned her about the sermon as we walked home. Take an interest in sermons, and women will believe in you, though you were the veriest scoundrel that ever admired Voltaire and considered the ‘Pucelle’ his _chef-d’œuvre_. What a little Puritan she is! She has been to church twice every Sunday ever since she can remember, she told me, and to Sunday-school, and to all kinds of examinations and cross-examinations in the vicar’s parlour. I don’t suppose _she_ would have floundered as I did, and come to grief over some of the questions those old fogies at Oxford asked me about Biblical history. She knows all about Saul, and David, and Jonathan, and those everlasting wars with the Philistines, I dare say. She is very pretty, lovely--yes, lovely, though _not_ high-bred. I sometimes fancy, though, that she must have decent blood in her veins. I never saw a prettier little hand upon my arm than that which rested there to-day, as I brought her home from church. If I were--something utterly different from what I am, I would get my degree, go in for a country curacy, and little Susy should be my wife. But _noblesse oblige_: which very elastic aphorism means, in my case, that I must marry a rich woman, and hold my own in my native county whenever the reigning potentate is polite enough to retire to the dusky shades whither all earthly sovereigns must go. “Poor little Susan! pretty little Susan! When I am a county magnate, laying down the law at the head of my table in the great dining-room at the hall, shall I look back and think of these days, and smile at myself, remembering that I could be so foolish as to go out on a wet Sunday to escort a little nursemaid along a damp clay road?