Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter
undertook the reformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel;
it was the vicar's one extravagance. Amabel was accounted a
beauty and intellectually gifted; she never played tennis,
and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee.
If you abstain from tennis AND read Maeterlinck in a small
country village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she
had been twice to Fecamp to pick up a good French accent from
the Americans staying there; consequently she had a knowledge
of the world which might be considered useful in dealings
with a worldling.

Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook
the reformation of its wayward member.

Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil
to tea in the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy
influence of natural surroundings, never having been in
Sicily, where things are different.

And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to
unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life,
which always seems so much more scandalous in the country,
where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has
happened during the night.

Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, "which simply sat
and looked beautiful, and defied competition."