“Mother of Parliaments, and the rest.” “You needn’t sneer. I tell you it’s a position that carries weight with it. I don’t wonder that it’s so coveted. Men spend thousands of pounds trying to reach it--thousands of pounds and years of their life.” “I’m not one of them, Forrester. Don’t look angrily at me because other men make such fools of themselves.” “I won’t, Wingfield, because I know that you won’t make a fool of yourself by refusing this offer. But I have said my last word of encouragement. After all, you know best what will suit you. It would be an impertinence on my part to suggest that you are not competent to decide for yourself. Don’t be in a hurry. Now, what about this electrical scheme?” CHAPTER XXIII Not one word had Priscilla uttered while that artful Mr. Forrester was talking to her husband, and, incidentally, giving her many opportunities for expressing her views either in accordance with or in divergence from those he expounded so fluently. Her silence surprised their visitor. He thought his friend Jack Wingfield an extremely lucky chap to have married a wife who knew when to be silent and was very generous in her time limit on this point. He was all the more amazed when he found that she was quite capable of expressing herself on such subjects as the future of electricity and the novels of Anatole France, with originality and distinction. A farmer’s daughter, was she? Well, all that he could say was that agriculture, which was laid on mankind as part of a Bible Curse scheme, and which has been the subject of a pretty fair amount of reprobation within recent years, deserved a good word if this young woman had come into the world under its auspices. But he took a leaf out of her book--one of the blank pages--one that had no word upon it--and went away, without another reference to the subject of his mission to the developing seaside resort. When he had gone, Jack suggested a stroll along the beach, and she picked up her hat in a moment Among her most artful perfections was her readiness to move at a moment’s notice. She was at all times prepared for everything. She never kept her husband waiting while she went to her room for a hat or coat. Of course he began to talk immediately of the possibility of Sandycliffe’s becoming developed out of all recognition of its charm. It was jolly rum, he thought, how places like that come and go. One year a place was the solitary right one to go to, and the next it was among the places that should never be so much as visited by anyone who wished to be thought anything; and such people were becoming more numerous every day. She agreed with him. She wondered if there were any people in the right set who decreed which watering-places on the coast should be visited, and which left alone, just as the best set in Framsby decreed in regard to persons.