And then the vicar shook hands with Mrs. Proudie, in that deferential manner which is due from a vicar to his bishop’s wife; and Mrs. Proudie returned the greeting with all that smiling condescension which a bishop’s wife should show to a vicar. Miss Proudie was not quite so civil. Had Mr. Robarts been still unmarried, she also could have smiled sweetly; but she had been exercising smiles on clergymen too long to waste them now on a married parish parson.
“And what are the difficulties, Mrs. Smith, in which I am to assist you?”
“We have six or seven gentlemen here, Mr. Robarts, and they always go out hunting before breakfast, and they never come back—I was going to say—till after dinner. I wish it were so, for then we should not have to wait for them.”
“Excepting Mr. Supplehouse, you know,” said the unknown lady, in a loud voice.
“And he is generally shut up in the library, writing articles.”
“He’d be better employed if he were trying to break his neck like the others,” said the unknown lady.
“Only he would never succeed,” said Mrs. Harold Smith. “But perhaps, Mr. Robarts, you are as bad as the rest; perhaps you, too, will be hunting to-morrow.”
“My dear Mrs. Smith!” said Mrs. Proudie, in a tone denoting slight reproach, and modified horror.
“Oh! I forgot. No, of course, you won’t be hunting, Mr. Robarts; you’ll only be wishing that you could.”
“Why can’t he?” said the lady with the loud voice.