"But we at The Brow, being near the clouds, are always accurately informed," put in Cyril wickedly from the further end of the table.
"Suppose we agree to call it south, and settle the matter," suggested Evelyn's soft tones. "Things are very much to us as we believe them."
"There was once an old gentleman," drawled Cuthbert, "who could never go out in an east wind. Quite impossible, you know. It always gave him bronchitis. Invariably. But a kind friend one day tied the weathercock, with the vane pointing west, while the wind blew from the east. The old gentleman went out for his constitutional, rejoicing in the west wind; and—wonderful to say—he caught no cold."
Sybella was offended. "Of course, I understand," she said. "Of course; Mr. Cuthbert means it is all fancy. But—" and a hiatus.
"I beg your pardon. There are no such things as fancies in the present day. It is all neurotic," explained Giles, with fascinating mildness.
"My story was merely a little illustration of the interaction between mind and matter—perhaps one may say, of the mastery of mind over matter."
"I thought it was an old schoolmaster," Jean said, while Sybella was trying to understand. "And a school-boy's trick."
"My dear Jean, never put a story right, when the moral is as good one way as the other," murmured Evelyn.
Jean laughed; and before Miss Devereux could make up her mind about that mysterious word, "neurotic," the talk drifted in a fresh direction.
Rub the second was again between the hostess and her Rector. Mr. Trevelyan dropped among matters ecclesiastical in conversation with gentle Mrs. Trevelyan, who always liked to dig a little information out of a man, whether or no her feminine brain could entirely assimilate it. He made unfortunate mention of "The Father's;" and Miss Devereux—scarcely more apt to fall foul of east winds than to fall foul of "the Fathers," all the more because she knew so little about them—overheard the remark.