Fleming, a little
aghast at this ravenous maternal vanity.

"What wretched poverty of expression!" Hadria complained. "I ask for
bread, and truly you give me a stone."

Joseph Fleming eyed his companion askance. "I--I admire your boys
immensely, as you know," he said.

"Not enough, not enough."

"What can I say more?"

"A mother has to find in her children all that she can hope to find in
life, and she naturally desires to make the most of them, don't you
see?"

"Ah! yes, quite so," said Joseph dubiously.

"Nobody, I suppose, likes to be commonplace all round; one must have
some poetry somewhere--so most women idealize their children, and if
other people won't help them in the effort, don't you see? it is most
discouraging."

"Are you chaffing, or what?" Joseph enquired.

"No, indeed; I am perilously serious."

"I can well understand how a mother must get absorbed in her children,"
said Joseph. "I suppose it's a sort of natural provision."

"Think of Mrs. Allan with her outrageous eight--all making mud-pies!"
cried Hadria; "a magnificent 'natural provision!' A small income, a
small house, with those pervasive eight. You know the stampede when one
goes to call; the aroma of bread and butter (there are few things more
inspiring); the cook always about to leave; Mrs. Allan with a racking
headache. It is indeed not difficult to understand how a mother would
get absorbed in her children. Why, their pinafores alone would become
absorbing."

"Quite so," said Mr. Fleming. Then a little anxious to change the
subject: "Oh, by the way, have you heard that the Priory is really to
be inhabited at last? Professor Theobald has almost decided to take it."

"Really? that will be exciting for Craddock Dene. We shall have another
household to dissect and denounce. Providence watches over us all, I
verily believe."

"I hope so," Joseph replied gravely.

"Truly I hope so too," Hadria said, no less seriously, "for indeed we
need it."

Joseph was too simple to be greatly surprised at anything that Mrs.
Temperley might say. He had decided that she was a little eccentric, and
that explained everything; just as he explained instances of
extraordinary reasoning power in a dog by calling it "instinct."
Whatever Mrs. Temperley might do was slightly eccentric, and had she
suddenly taken it into her head to dance a fandango on the public road,
it would have merely put a little extra strain on that word.

By dint of not underst