"Quite so, and you never try to bring out the good which does _not_ amuse you. Sunday schools are beneficial rather than entertaining. I don't see Miss--what's her name?" and Lady Jim glanced round the room. "Joan Tallentire," snapped her hostess; "you remember the name well enough. It's fashionable to have a short memory, I suppose." "For debts," said Leah, sweetly; "but Miss Tallentire?" "She is looking after her father's house, as the mother is ill." "Poor woman! I hope Lionel is not preaching at her, to make her worse." "Lionel isn't always in the pulpit. By the way, Leah, he told me that he had a serious talk with you at Firmingham." "Did he? Yes! I believe he did give me a dull quarter of an hour. Something about sin, I fancy it was. Parsons have a monomania on that subject." Lady Canvey made an angry noise in her wrinkled throat. "You're impossible," she pronounced tartly. "Lionel wishes to improve you." "What about Jim? Charity should commence with his own family." "Well, my dear, Lionel admires you, and----" "Oh! He _is_ a man, then. I don't think I ever made running with a clergyman; it might be rather fun. I suppose Lionel would recite the Song of Solomon to me--there's lots of love-talk in it. Not very proper talk, either, I'm told. Perhaps Solomon wrote it for married women; he had some experience of them, hadn't he? He collected concubines, didn't he?--just like a stamp-maniac." "Leah, you're insufferable." "And impossible!" She rose to go, and arranged the fur-lined Medici collar of her evening wrap in the dim mirror. "But I'm about to be punished for my sins. The Duke made me promise to go to this At Home. Mrs. Saracen, you know--she's one of the submerged Upper Ten, or she married one of them; I forget which, though I know she has something to do with a pickle, or a sauce. Very amusing old thing, too. She gives you a nutshell biography of every one before she introduces." "What on earth for?" "Oh, so that you may be warned against people's skeletons. Mrs. Saracen points out the cupboard and tells you not to open it, and of course you do." Lady Canvey chuckled. "Rather clever. And her friends----?" "Male and female, I believe. She collects people who have done something." "In the criminal way?" "She would, if the law allowed them out of gaol. But at present she contents herself with freaks. I don't go to middle-class menageries as a rule, but at the Duke's request I patronise this one." "Come to-morrow and tell me all about it." "If you'll promise to be nice." Her godmother was silent for a moment. "Leah, my dear," she said at length, taking the gloved hand, "I am sorry we always quarrel when we meet. I really have a corner in my heart for you, and if you were only less--less--" Lady Canvey hunted for the right word--"less exasperating, we should get on excellently." Lady Jim nodded, squeezed the bony hands, and kissed the wrinkled cheek.