She laughed.

"Well," she answered, "I suppose we shall survive it. Jem has got his
commission, in a Goorkha regiment."

"Goorkha regiment? Nonsense!"

"Aunt Anna has just told me so. She is very pleased, and seems prepared
for the--best."

"That is the custom of fools, to be prepared for the best--only."

The Rector gave a despairing shrug of the shoulders. He was a man who
allowed himself, after the manner of the ancients with whom he lived
mentally, a few gestures. He smoked a very expressive cigarette. He was
smoking one at this moment, and threw it away half consumed. This divine
was possessed of a rooted conviction that the Almighty made a great
mistake whenever He invested temporal power in a woman, whom he was
ungallantly inclined to classify under a celebrated dictum of Mr.
Carlyle's respecting the population of these happy Isles, who, truth to
tell, care not one jot what Mr. Carlyle may think of them.

The Reverend Thomas Glynde and his daughter walked all the way home
without exchanging another word. In the Rectory drawing-room they found
Mrs. Glynde, small, nervous, worried. She had evidently devoted
considerable thought and attention to the preservation of the hot
buttered toast. Poor humble little soul, she was quite content to
minister to the bodily requirements of her spouse, having long been
convinced of the inferiority of her own sex in every respect except a
certain limited knowledge of housekeeping matters.