Mr Rubb was very good-looking; Mr Maguire was afflicted by a terrible squint. Mr Rubb’s mode of speaking was pleasant to her; whereas she was by no means sure that she liked Mr Maguire’s speech. But Mr Maguire was by profession a gentleman. As the discreet young man, who is desirous of rising in the world, will eschew skittles, and in preference go out to tea at his aunt’s house—much more delectable as skittles are to his own heart—so did Miss Mackenzie resolve that it would become her to select Messrs Stumfold and Maguire as her male friends, and to treat Mr Rubb simply as a man of business. She was denying herself skittles and beer, and putting up with tea and an old aunt, because she preferred the proprieties of life to its pleasures. Is it right that she should be blamed for such self-denial? But now the skittles and beer had come after her, as those delights will sometimes pursue the prudent youth who would fain avoid them. Mr Rubb was there, in her drawing-room, looking extremely well, shaking hands with her very comfortably, and soon abandoning his conversation on that matter of business to which she had determined to confine herself. She was angry with him, thinking him to be very free and easy; but, nevertheless, she could not keep herself from talking to him.

“You can’t do better than five per cent,” he had said to her, “not with first-class security, such as this is.”

All that had been well enough. Five per cent and first-class security were, she knew, matters of business; and though Mr Rubb had winked his eye at her as he spoke of them, leaning forward in his chair and looking at her not at all as a man of business, but quite in a friendly way, yet she had felt that she was so far safe. She nodded her head also, merely intending him to understand thereby that she herself understood something about business. But when he suddenly changed the subject, and asked her how she liked Mr Stumfold’s set, she drew herself up suddenly and placed herself at once upon her guard.

“I have heard a great deal about Mr Stumfold,” continued Mr Rubb, not appearing to observe the lady’s altered manner, “not only here and where I have been for the last few days, but up in London also. He is quite a public character, you know.”

“Clergymen in towns, who have large congregations, always must so be, I suppose.”

“Well, yes; more or less. But Mr Stumfold is decidedly more, and not less. People say he is going in for a bishopric.”

“I had not heard it,” said Miss Mackenzie, who did not quite understand what was meant by going in for a bishopric.

“Oh, yes, and a very likely man he would have been a year or two ago. But they say the prime minister has changed his tap lately.”

“Changed his tap!” said Miss Mackenzie.

“He used to draw his bishops very bitter, but now he draws them mild and creamy. I dare say Stumfold did his best, but he didn’t quite get his hay in while the sun shone.”