"Indeed, I know," Olive assured him easily. "When I was young, I used to take it with all sorts of cream in it; but now—" She shook her head. Then she added suavely, "You are sure it is quite all right, Mr. Ross?"
The curate took a courteous taste. Then he strangled a little, not so much, though, at the tea as at the coming falsehood.
"Oh, very!" he said politely, and then he took to stirring his tea with suspicious fervour.
"How strange it always seems to have the town fill up again!" Olive observed, still determined to keep the talk away from Brenton. "And yet, we miss the girls, when they are gone."
"We miss them at the church," the curate answered with unexpected energy. "They increase the offertory at least twenty-five per cent, and they keep the choir boys from flatting on their upper notes. I had never seen a girls' college, till I came here; but I can't help thinking it has its own disadvantages. I like them in the aggregate, Miss Keltridge; but I can't seem to get on with them individually. They are so distressingly young. I leave all that to Mr. Brenton."
"He has been most successful," Olive assented tamely.
"Yes. He has a way with women, as they say; he manages them by the ears. At least—I mean—" The curate, confounded by the hideous mental picture that he had evoked, was floundering helplessly.
"Exactly," Olive assented once more.
The curate rallied.
"And yet, they all adore him," he concluded. "That is the strange thing about Mr. Brenton, Miss Keltridge. He manages most women grandly," the curate, sure that he had retrieved his error, in his self-gratulation promptly slipped into a second one; "but that suffragette wife of his—"