'I'm glad it is not that. What sort of a place is it? In the country?'
'Beautiful country, splendid church, freshly done up, tip-top schools and all the rest of it, that a lazy dog like me might never have hatched, but he may just manage to keep stirring.'
'Nonsense! you know better than that. What population?'
'Six hundred, or thereabouts.'
'Just the same as this. It is too good to be true. There must be some great drawback to come. Let me hear it.'
'Well, if you will have it,' said William, with appalling gravity, 'it is much the same drawback as exists in the Russian Church, where preferment goes by the petticoat. The fellow offers it to me on an understanding you mayn't approve.'
'What?'
'That I should marry his sister.'
'Oh!' with equal gravity, 'did he really make that stipulation?'
'Not in so many words, but there's such a thing as an honourable understanding.'