"Oh, yes, he was," said Adela.
"It will be a long time, I know, before I earn five hundred pounds a year. Do you know, he never wrote about it as though he thought he'd been lucky in getting it."
"Didn't he?"
"Never; and I thought he was melancholy and out of spirits when I saw him the other day. He ought to marry; that's the fact. A young clergyman with a living should always get a wife."
"You are like the fox that lost its tail," said Adela, trying hard to show that she joined in the conversation without an effort.
"Ah! but the case is very different. There can be no doubt that Arthur ought to lose his tail. His position in the world is one which especially requires him to lose it."
"He has his mother and sisters, you know."
"Oh, mother and sisters! Mother and sisters are all very well, or not very well, as the case may be; but the vicar of a parish should be a married man. If you can't get a wife for him down there in Hampshire, I shall have him up to London, and look one out for him there. Pray take the matter in hand when you go home, Miss Gauntlet."
Adela smiled, and did not blush; nor did she say that she quite agreed with him that the vicar of a parish should be a married man.
"Well, I shan't ask any questions," said Bertram, as soon as he and Harcourt were in the street, "or allow you to offer any opinion; because, as we have both agreed, you have not pluck enough to give it impartially." Bertram as he said this could hardly preserve himself from a slight tone of triumph.