"And so have fulfilled their mission," the squire smiled.
"By no means; they have no mission; they have simply a hunger, or rather a pain which goes away when their appetite is stayed, and comes on again before the meal has been well digested. Then they go forth once more seeking whom or what they may devour."
"Tell us of the woman with a mission," I pleaded.
"Miss Holden is anxious to discover in what category she is to be classed," laughed the squire. "You are treading on dangerous ground, Derwent. Let me advise you to proceed warily."
"Mr. Evans, when a boy at school I learned the Latin maxim—'Truth is often attended with danger,' but I am sure Miss Holden will be merciful towards its humble votary."
I smiled and he continued: "The woman with a mission, Miss Holden, is an altogether superior creature. She may be adorable; on the other hand she may be a nuisance and a bore. Everything depends on the mission—and the woman."
"A safe answer, Philip," sneered the vicar's wife, and the squire smiled.
"There is no other safe way, madam, than the way of Truth, and I am treading it now. Even if the woman be a nuisance, even if the mission be unworthy, she who makes it hers may be ennobled. Let us assume that she believes with all her heart that she has been sent into the world for one definite purpose—shall we say to work for the abatement of the smoke nuisance? That involves, amongst other things——"
"Depriving poor weak man of his chief solace—tobacco," snapped the vicar's wife.
"Exactly. Now see how this strengthens her character, and calls out qualities of endurance and self-sacrifice. The poor weak man, her husband, deprived of his chief solace, tobacco, turns to peppermints, moroseness and bad language. His courtesy is changed to boorishness, his placidity to snappishness. All this is trying to his wife, but being a woman with a mission she regards these things philosophically as incidental to a transition period, and she bears her cross with ever-increasing gentleness and——"