"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the
things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I
ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."

Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making
excuses for her and in believing them.

"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and
the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you
come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so
well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where
your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you
would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."

Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there
was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.

"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I
were ever foolish enough to marry--and it would be foolishness in a
spoiled creature like me--I should want a husband who could accommodate
himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves
to anything or anybody."

The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted.
Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.

"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you
can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"