"What you were not talking about, you mean; yes, of course I knew. A lifelong experience has taught me to follow unerringly the trapeze-like manoeuvres of your acrobatic conversation. Eighteen." "Then they'll be leaving school soon." "At once. The boy for Oxford and the girl for wherever girls go to when they grow up: Arcady, I believe, is the name of the place. But I, alas! have never been in Arcady, nor you either, Annabel, worse luck for us both!" "I can't tell whether I've been there or not. I've travelled so much that I can't remember the names of half the places I've been to. I don't see how anybody can, unless they make a rule of buying picture post-cards at all the places where they stay. I wish I'd done this from the beginning, I went to so many interesting places with dear papa. But I don't think picture post-cards were so much used then as they are now." Annabel was the type of woman who loves to have a view of every hotel she stays at, and to mark with a cross her own bedroom window. "I should have thought valentines rather than postcards would have supplied views of Arcady," I murmured. "Yes; and isn't it rather interesting to see how as picture post-cards have come in, valentines have gone out? I think it is so instructive to note little things like that; they show the march of the times." Annabel always had a wonderful nose for instruction; she scented it miles off--and in such strange places, too. For her there was certainly no stone without its sermon, and no running brook without its book. "Arthur and I were saying last night that you would have made a good Prime Minister or Archbishop of Canterbury," I remarked, gazing at her thoughtfully. "How ridiculous you two boys are! Besides, I never heard of a woman filling either of those posts." Annabel was nothing if not literal, and I found her literalness very restful. "A woman once became Pope of Rome," I said, "somewhere in the Middle Ages. At least there is a legend to that effect." I smiled and spoke most benignly. There is something very invigorating in being regarded as a boy when one is over forty. But Annabel shook her head. "I could never have been a Pope on principle; I so disapprove of Roman Catholics. At least if I had been I should have turned Protestant." "But you couldn't have done so at the time of which am speaking. Protestants weren't invented." "Then I should have invented them," retorted the intrepid Annabel. And I felt sure that she would. She was quite capable of it. "And I really don't see how Arthur will be able to manage them," she went on without a pause; "he isn't at all cut out for that sort of thing." I resisted a temptation to ask why Arthur wasn't cut out for the proper management of Protestants, and replied: "He feels that himself; but he couldn't very well refuse when Wildacre asked him, and seemed so set on it, you see."