With Bobby's return to college, life for Prudence reverted to the old dreary routine of ceaseless exasperating duties and increasingly curtailed liberty. She had a strong suspicion that the sisterly supervision which she was conscious was being exercised was carried out at brother William's suggestion. Although there was no one, with the exception of the curate, to tempt her to indiscreet behaviour it was very obvious that she was not trusted to venture abroad without one of her sisters to chaperon her. Prudence found this irksome at first, and set herself, sometimes successfully, to evade their united vigilance; but after one or two apparently accidental encounters with the curate, who appeared astonishingly in the most unexpected places and joined her on her stolen walks, she accepted the new development with a meekness which agreeably surprised her family, and discomfited the curate. It was the curate's quietly resolved manner, his air of exaggerated conspiracy, that drove Prudence to this unusual submissiveness. She knew quite well that the little man was making up his mind to propose to her, and she did not wish to give him the opportunity. Her decision was taken abruptly, after meeting him one day on the high road along which she was walking briskly with her back to the tall chimneys and her face to the wind and the little village which lay half-way between Wortheton and the junction town which connected it with the busier world from which it held aloof. The curate was cycling from the opposite direction. He was due to attend a meeting within the half-hour and had barely time to arrive at the appointed place; but when he came face to face with Prudence he alighted nimbly from his machine, and, pulling off a heather mixture glove, extended an eager hand. For a moment she allowed him to hold hers in his grip, and found herself wondering while she faced him which of his admirers had knitted the gloves for him. Then she withdrew her hand and remarked, for the lack of something more interesting to say, that the wind was boisterous. "Yes," he said; "you have it against you. Why not face about? It's a great help at one's back." This suggestion Prudence considered artful without being brilliant. She had no desire for his company on the return journey. "I love to feel it in my face," she said. "And since you prefer it behind it is well we are travelling in opposite directions." But the curate was not to be disposed of so easily. He turned his cycle and fell into step beside her. Prudence was taller than he; he was obliged to look up from under the wide brim of his hat when regarding her, a reversal of the usual order which occasioned him secret vexation. "One so seldom gets a chance of seeing you alone," he said. "I suppose it is because you are so much younger that your sisters make so much of you. They care for you tremendously. It is beautiful to observe their devotion."