"That would not suit an energetic Christian like Lionel."
"It doesn't. He and Joan take pleasure trips into the Lambeth slums and ask seedy ruffians to stay with them in the country. What with converted burglars and wives who assure you they haven't been beaten for weeks, the place is quite a Whitechapel Paradise. Lionel preaches to the ruffians, and Joan listens to the wives with whole skins. I believe they join forces to wash the children. Oh, they have rollicking times at Firmingham Vicarage, I assure you."
"Very meritorious times," said Lady Canvey, reprovingly--"quite like the primitive Christian Church."
"Less clean, I fancy, and more ungrammatical," murmured Leah.
"Don't mock, my dear. Lionel is a noble man."
"I quite agree with you, and without mockery. Jim is also a noble man, in a different sense, if you will forgive the pun."
"It is unworthy of your wit."
"I cannot always be pyrotechnical. You need flint and steel to strike fire, and I find no flints amongst the idiots I have to entertain. Do you know, godmother,"--Leah stared into the fire--"I often wish that Lionel had remained the Duke."
"And your husband had been really a corpse? How like you!"
"Well," said the Duchess, cheerfully. "Jim might have been of some use if his,--what do you call those things?--oh, yes,--if his vortices had combined with other elements to grow into plants and sheep and cows, and generally do the sort of things which vortices are supposed to do. But as a Duke he is a failure."