"We have nothing to do with Miss Pringle. It is Phyllys whom we want. Certainly not Barbara!" Mrs. Keith knitted her brows. Mr. Dugdale began to fold up his letter in disgust. "Barbara Pringle is an excellent person of her kind," he said stiffly. "Well-meaning and conscientious. Most people are well-meaning. But the bane of womanhood is to be always in the right. Barbara Pringle is always in the right. She never makes a mistake. Therefore she is monotonous and uninteresting." "Let us devoutly hope that Phyllys sometimes blunders," laughed Colin. He saw the vanishing letter, and added, "But you were going to read us something." "Nothing! Nothing!" Mr. Dugdale waved the subject aside with his hand. "Merely a passing idea. Barbara Pringle has usurped its place. Inadvertently I interrupted somebody—or somebody interrupted me. In either case, I apologise." Glances were exchanged. Mr. Dugdale crossed his legs, and contemplated an empty fireplace. "The Infinitely Little!" he mused. "It may be masculine; but it is more commonly feminine. Woman, when she is small, is very small indeed. When last I had the pleasure of seeing Barbara Pringle, I should have described her as an excellent example of the Infinitely Little. Good, no doubt; but narrow—painfully narrow. A woman whose whole Universe might be packed into an egg-shell." "Think what her life has been," suggested Colin. "Forty years in a Yorkshire burrow." "Narrowness is a matter of mental make, not of circumstances." "No doubt; but circumstances tell upon one's mental make. A plant, whatever its make, can't develop without light and air. Miss Pringle has had neither." "If she had, she could not have made use of them." "And the family aim is to rescue Phyllys from a like fate. Giles should be equal to the old lady, even backed by the redoubtable Barbara." "Barbara Pringle is a woman not easily managed." "Ten years since you saw her," said Mrs. Keith. Mr. Dugdale put his finger-tips together, and entered on a discussion of dates. He proved, to his own satisfaction, that not ten years, but precisely nine and a half, had elapsed since the date of his visit to the Yorkshire village, where lived old Mrs. Wyverne and her pair of grand-daughters. Then he stood up, his eyes bent upon Colin. "Sorry—no. Can't stay longer. Busy; and so are you." He was still chafing under his supposed slight. "Ta-ta, everybody. Whom on earth has Colin grown like?" "It's generally decided that I am like nobody," remarked the object of his scrutiny. "Not the mater, in any case." "'I' should have said Colin was like everybody in turn," Mrs. Keith observed. Mr. Dugdale, with wrinkled brows, pursued his quest. "Can't imagine," he repeated. "It is a definite resemblance." He frowned anew, standing deep in thought. "I have it! That old portrait in oils, which used to hang here—I never could understand why it was banished to the gallery! It's one of the best things in the house!"