The vicar laughed.
"I mean to live for the next twenty years, my dear, and if Puffin intends to put up with twenty years of Lucy Warrender for the sake of this living, though it is a fat one, I shall consider that the labourer will have been worthy of his hire."
"Don't be profane, John," said the lady reprovingly.
"To do Puffin justice, I don't think he is mercenary. Lucy has probably turned his head."
"John, Mr. Puffin is not of an inflammable nature."
"All curates are of an inflammable nature, my dear; why you turned my head in your time."
"I trust, Mr. Dodd, that my mental qualities attracted you, and not mere physical beauty."
"Of course, my dear, of course; but you were a monstrous fine woman then, and for the matter of that, you are still, Cecilia," said the vicar, as he helped himself to a third glass of his '47 port.
His wife smiled and smoothed her cap ribbons.
"Don't exceed, John," she said, with a warning gesture, "or Mr. Puffin may not have to wait twenty years for his preferment after all. You must admonish him, John; a man of his principles, his pretended principles, is not suited for married life. He told me himself, that ever since his ordination he has assumed what he calls a priestly garb. I ask you, John, how could he be married in a cassock? How could he go on his honeymoon in it?"