“The thing is,” I observed, “a judicious balancing of considerations. Here, on the one hand, is justice to be done to the girls--in the way of accomplishments and appearance, I may presume?--and education to be given to the boys--it would be no bad thing if someone taught Dick how to make a fly, for example; on the other hand lie what I may broadly term your inclinations and----” I awoke to the fact that Miss Prudence had not been listening to the latter portion of my remark. She was rubbing the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, and frowning now quite heavily. Then she twisted one little hand round the other; and almost inaudibly she said: “How can one balance considerations”--(She infused a pleasant scorn into her intonation of these respectable words)--“How can one balance considerations when----?” _Primâ facie_ that “when----” admitted of various interpretations. But I chose one without hesitation. “Then why this talk about how much a bishop gets, you calculating heartless girl?” She darted at me a look of fearful merriment. “And they make them quite young sometimes in these days,” I added. And I rounded off my period by remarking that Sir John Ffolliot seemed a stupid sort of dog. “Yes, isn’t he?” “Might do for Clara Jenkins?” “If I thought that----” Miss Prudence began hotly. “But the idea is preposterous,” I added hastily. “One of your sisters now?” “That’s really not a bad idea,” she conceded graciously. In fact, she had suddenly grown altogether very gracious--and I do not refer merely to the marked civility of her manner towards myself. The frown had vanished, the wrinkle was not: the hands were clasped in a comfortable repose. She looked across to me with a ridiculously contented smile. “It’s such a good thing to have a talk with a really sensible man,” she said. I took off my hat--but I also rose to my feet. To present me as a future bishop was asking too much of the whirligig of time. Not a kaleidoscope could do it! Besides, I wasn’t serious about it; it was just the meadow, the river--and the rest. In order to prove this to myself beyond dispute, I said that I had to go to the post office and despatch an important letter. “To the post office?” said Prudence, displaying some confusion at the mention of that institution. “Oh, then, would you mind--it would be so kind--would you really mind----?” “Calling in at the parlour window and telling Mr Davenport that you’re going to have some tennis after tea? With pleasure, of course.” “I didn’t know you knew he lodged there!” she cried. “Pending promotion to the Palace, yes.” I made that last remark after I had turned my back, and I didn’t look round to see whether Miss Prudence had heard it; it was, in fact, in the nature of an “aside”--a thing which may be heard or not at pleasure. “Won’t you come too?” she called.