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 dra