"Oh Reggie, how silly you are to drag Adam and Eve into a thing like the Needlework Guild, which has nothing in the world to do with them. As I've told you, the rule of the Guild is that for every twenty garments given by a particular parish, a grant of twenty garments is allotted to that parish; while the odd garments outside the twenties are given to the poorest East-end parishes, who can't afford to send any garments at all." "I know, I know!" I cried hastily, in a valiant attempt to stem the flood of Annabel's explanations. But she went on as if I had not spoken. "Therefore you see, when a well-to-do parish sends less than twenty garments, it doesn't get any grant at all; and that is just what I am saying about Summerglade. Summerglade didn't send as many as twenty garments, did it, Fay?" "No, Miss Kingsnorth, only a measly seventeen." "I blame the Vicar, Mr. Sneyd, for that," said Annabel severely. "He is a most feeble person, and takes no interest at all in the Needlework Guild. He called here for a subscription for Foreign Missions the other day, which I considered a great impertinence, as I cannot see what claim the foreign heathen of Summerglade have upon me. I thought him a most stupid man." "I thought him a blooming idiot," exclaimed Fay. Annabel started as if she had been shot. "Oh, my dear, what an improper expression to make use of." "I learnt it from Frankie," Fay explained; "he is always calling people blooming idiots." "But Frank is different," said Annabel, who would have found an excuse for Frank if he had committed murder. "I don't recognise any difference at all," said I, taking up the cudgels on Fay's behalf. "I cannot see that the bloom is in any way rubbed off the idiot by Fay's using the expression instead of Frank." "But it is different, Reggie. There is a difference between boys and girls, whether you see it or not. I can quite understand that, as Frank and Fay are so much alike, they seem to you like the same person. But they are not really the same, and I am surprised at your stupidity in thinking that they are." Annabel might marvel at my obtuseness, but not more than I marvelled at hers. Fay bent low over St. Etheldreda's petticoats, but not low enough to prevent my seeing that she did so in order to hide a smile, which smile, to my disgust, brought the blood into my cheeks as if I had been a raw youth of seventeen instead of an avuncular person of forty-two. "Come out into the garden, Fay," I said, hopping down from my perch upon Mount Ararat in a feeble attempt to cover my infantile confusion; "it is a shame to spend St. Luke's summer in the atmosphere of St. James's unbleached shirts."