“Well, I’m not going, after inviting a man to luncheon, to rush out and tell him we have heard a cock-and-bull story about his doings a quarter of a century ago, and so we can’t let him come in.”
“And so Beatrice and Reginald are to get their ideas of the church from this man? I might have known what sort of a clergyman you would pick up, who would never receive Mr. Lovekin or Mr. Butterworth! I am told this Mr. Vernon Brander doesn’t even dress like a clergyman.”
“He wears a round collar,” said Mr. Denison; “perhaps that will save the morals of Beatrice and Reginald. Anyhow, he doesn’t talk up in his head like old Buttermilk, and he doesn’t look so like a trussed chicken as that lean-necked Lovekin used to do.”
“At least there was no scandal about either of those gentlemen,” said his wife with dignity. “A girl could trust herself with either of them.”
“She’d have an odd taste if she couldn’t.”
“Perhaps you have no objection to this man as a suitor for your daughter?”
“He hasn’t proposed yet.”
“Or to the chance of her being found dead in a mysterious manner.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t make away with more than seventy-five per cent. of the girls he comes across. Olivia might take her chance,” said Mr. Denison, who was getting sleepy, and had had enough of the conversation.
This flippancy silenced her for a time; but it had for its permanent effect on Mrs. Denison the strengthening of her resolution to show this black sheep of the church what a high-principled British matron thought of him.