“My dear,” quoth Mrs. Mince, balancing a large slab of cake in her saucer, “young people are naturally irreverent in these days. You would hardly believe me, but Gabriel Strong, a mere boy, had the impudence to argue with my husband on religious matters after dinner the other evening. Poor, dear Jacob came home quite upset.” Mrs. Marjoy’s chair creaked. She was a lady who seemed to extract discords even from things inanimate. The harmonium in the church school-room was her most eloquent disciple. “What had the young cub to say?” “Well, my dear, he contested that he could see no harm in that ignorant nonconformist preaching at the village cross on Sundays. He snubbed poor, dear Jacob most abruptly, and declared that he should go and hear the fellow preach. Think of that—to the vicar of a parish!” Mrs. Marjoy sniffed, a habit of hers when she wished to be expressive. “Abominable!” “Such bad taste!” “Intellectual young men are always objectionable. Strong, Junior, always strikes me as a dissolute person. What do you think, my dear?” Mrs. Mince cogitated over her cake. She was not exactly conversant with the characteristics of dissolute young men, but as the vicaress of Saltire she aimed at claiming a mild versatility in the technicalities of vice and virtue. “Jacob declares,” she said, retreating upon an infallible authority, “that he has never met a young fellow so irreverently arrogant towards the opinions of his elders. And Jacob is such a man of the world!” “Exactly,” said Mrs. Marjoy, with a tinge of irony. “It is so ill-bred to argue with people more experienced than one’s self.” The Cassandra of the tray solaced herself with a second cup of anæmic tea. She had an irritable habit of shrugging her shoulders as though troubled—science forgive the expression!—with a chronic urticaria of the brain. Irritability, indeed, was her enshrouding atmosphere. “As for those Gusset girls—” she began. Mrs. Mince held up a horror-stricken hand. “Such underbred young women. Why, I remember one of them coming to church in a red dress on Good Friday. The way they get up, too!” Mrs. Marjoy plunged into detail with the fervor of a scientist. “I told that woman Ophelia once,” she observed, “that I wondered how she could go into a public place with a low-cut blouse and no collar.” “Really!” said Mrs. Mince, rapturously. “She was rude, as usual. Said some necks did need covering up. It is no use giving such girls advice.” “Absolutely useless,” observed Mrs. Mince. The teapot was regarnished and two more slices of cake delivered to martyrdom. Mrs. Marjoy leaned back in her creaking chair and indulged in philosophies. “The aristocracy is rotten to the core,” she remarked, with comprehensive complacency. “The broad-minded and educated middle-class forms the backbone of the country. Any third-rate actress could teach many duchesses manners.” “My dear, your opinions are so full of commonsense.” “I am always outspoken.” “An excellent habit.”