Mrs. Clinch returned a glance of intelligence. "They've begun
already?"

"Not yet; but they're sure to now, at any minute, my publisher tells
me."

Mrs. Fetherel's look of apprehension sat oddly on her small
features, which had an air of neat symmetry somehow suggestive of
being set in order every morning by the housemaid. Some one (there
were rumors that it was her cousin) had once said that Paula
Fetherel would have been very pretty if she hadn't looked so like a
moral axiom in a copy-book hand.

Mrs. Clinch received her confidence with a smile. "Well," she said,
"I suppose you were prepared for the consequences of authorship?"

Mrs. Fetherel blushed brightly. "It isn't their coming," she
owned--"it's their coming _now_."

"Now?"

"The Bishop's in town."

Mrs. Clinch leaned back and shaped her lips to a whistle which
deflected in a laugh. "Well!" she said.

"You see!" Mrs. Fetherel triumphed.

"Well--weren't you prepared for the Bishop?"