"I don't know where to begin; and there is not much going on. Of course you have heard that Canon Meyers is going away. He will be a great loss, dear old man. Nobody is appointed yet in his stead . . . Mr. Kennedy has a curate—that is something new. A very hardworking young man, I believe—and rather given to arguments. Miss Devereux thinks him delightful . . . She talks of spending part of Cyril's vacation at the Brow this autumn, and at Christmas, he will have done with Oxford. Isn't it odd how she has kept him away from home? He and I have not once met for fifteen months."
"I am told that he is a good-looking young fellow."
"Mrs. Kennedy calls him a 'lovely youth!'"
"H'm!"
"And Miss Devereux says he has such a sweetly aristocratic air."
"And Jean—?"
"Oh, I like him, of course; we always have been friends. He is too much 'one of England's curled darlings' for my taste; but when you have a friend, you don't give him up for his looks. I wish he were not quite so dainty. But I'm speaking of more than a year ago. He may have changed any amount."
Jem seemed to be thinking of something else.
"So you have not yet heard who is to be the Canon's successor! What would you say if it were I?"
Jean laughed as at a joke.