"I think you had better go first, my prettiness," says I seductively, "I don't doubt that you will make a better hand of it than I, and you will have a better knowledge of how to talk to the parson. I am so devilish unused to talking to parsons, d'ye see." "Oh, yes, I quite see that," says Cynthia significantly, "and I also see that you are afraid." "I dare say you might have shot wider of the truth," says I. "It is the first time I have been called on to smell this kind of powder, and burn me! if ever I want to be called on again." "I hope you won't be," says Cynthia. She herself, I must confess, was as cool as a cucumber. Her colour was a little high perhaps, and the animation in her eyes was, I think, more than usually fine. But take her altogether, she seemed to have all the calmness and assurance of an old campaigner, whilst I was wincing and starting like a raw recruit. They say that all women are alike in this. They go to church as complacently as they go to Ranelagh, and take as keen an enjoyment from the reading of the marriage service as they do in the performance of the Italian dancers at the theatre in Covent Garden. And it is said again that never a man of us all, whatever his years, disposition and ideas, comes to this ceremony but what he is beset with those same qualms that fastened upon me so unexpectedly at the parson's gate. When we walked up the pretty garden and came to the door of the parson's house, it was Cynthia who unhesitatingly knocked upon it. But the operation had to be repeated ere it was replied to. And when at last the door was drawn back from within we were confronted by a stout, red-faced woman in a gown of printed calico. Her sleeves were rolled up above the elbow, her cap and apron were awry, and there was a look of industrious ill-temper about her that contributed nothing to our encouragement. She stuck her hands on her hips, filled the whole of the doorway with her defiant presence, very like the dragon in the fable that barred the way to the princess in the enchanted palace, and surveyed us in a grimly critical fashion from top to toe. "Is the parson at home?" says the audacious Cynthia. "He be!" says the woman in a loud, harsh voice. "We wish to see him then, if you please," says Cynthia. "What might your business be?" says the woman, looking us all over with a really disconcerting keenness. "I think we must explain that to the parson himself," says Cynthia. "Then I think you will not then," says the woman, mighty uncivilly. "I've formed my own opinion of you. You shall not see the master, not if I know it. He's got such a character for softness of heart all about the countryside that you vagrant beggars come for miles to get what you can out of him. It's mortal lucky he's got me to look after him, or he would have given away the shirt off his back this many a year ago."