“Certainly,” replied the Major. “In the first place, Paris is not quite so pleasant as it used to be; London, too, is not attractive; and we thought that, on the whole, Manchester was to be preferred. Moreover, a good deal will have to be done during the next twelvemonth, and Manchester will do it. You will hear all about it when your club meets next time.”
“You’ve been in Paris?” said Mrs. Zachariah. “Isn’t it very wicked?”
“Well, that depends on what you call wicked.”
“Surely there cannot be two opinions on that point.”
“It does seem so; and yet when you live abroad you find that things which are made a great deal of here are not thought so much of there; and, what is very curious, they think other things very wrong there of which we take no account here.”
“Is that because they are not Christians?”
“Oh dear no; I am speaking of good Christian people; at least so I take them to be. And really, when you come to consider it, we all of us make a great fuss about our own little bit of virtue, and undervalue the rest—I cannot tell upon whose authority.”
“But are they not, Major, dreadfully immoral in France?”
Pauline leaned over her plate and looked Mrs. Coleman straight in the face.
“Mrs. Coleman, you are English; you—”