Therefore, for over a year now, Catia secretly had chafed with the friction of her surroundings. As yet, however, she had not confessed to Brenton the chafing, had not explained to him that her eyes were searching their horizon for any possible loophole of escape. Catia was more wise than are most women. She never wasted any breath in demanding absolute futilities. For the present, she saw clearly, Brenton was quite contented with his parish. For the present, it was enough for his young ambitions to know he had a parish and was doing it some good. Later, she would take a hand in stirring up his slumbering ambition. If she knew Scott at all, he would not be content for ever with preaching to country farmers and dandling their babies on his knees; nor with interspersing moral reflections with inquiries regarding the season's crops; nor with basing his sermons upon the tares and the wheat, and the fig tree, and other texts so palpably bucolic in their interest. However, Catia would grant him a little resting time, before she goaded him up to girding his loins anew. Indeed, he needed it, she admitted freely to herself in her more generous moments. The years of study, long at best, and, in his case, lengthened by needful intervals of money-earning toil, had taken it out of him badly. He needed a little time to recover from their strain, to grow accustomed to his new dignity as preacher and to learn to take himself a little less strenuously, before he would be fitted to assume his proper place in a wider field than any of which as yet he appeared to be dreaming. However, two years, it seemed to Catia, had been an ample rest-time. Therefore,-- "Fudge!" she said. And then, "Don't be profane, Scott," she rebuked him, with the literalness which had replaced her meagre childish sense of humour. "The good Lord didn't make your surplices a full eighth of a yard too long, nor put you into a black stole for the whole year round. Besides, you were the only man in that whole convocation that buttoned his collar in front. I should have supposed you'd have known better than that, before you got your license." Brenton's lips curved into the little smile she always dreaded. Because she dreaded it, it antagonized her. "Did you?" he queried. Her antagonism lent a tartness to her reply. "I never professed to go through a divinity school," she retorted. "If I had, though----" Her pause was fraught with meaning. He made no effort to discount the meaning. Instead,-- "I don't doubt it, Catia," he responded quietly. "However, as it happens, I had some other things to think about." That brought her to a momentary halt. However, she swiftly rallied. "Some people can think of more than one thing at a time," she announced, with something of the same accent in which, long years before, she had ejaculated "Dirty-Face!"