"I wish you would contrive to keep yourself clean, or else wear a
pinafore," he said.

Betty flushed scarlet.

"I'm very sorry," she said, "but it's only water colour. It will wash
out."

"You are nearly twenty, are you not?" the Vicar inquired with the dry
smile that always infuriated his step-daughter. How was she to know
that it was the only smile he knew, and that smiles of any sort had
long grown difficult to him?

"Eighteen," she said.

"It is almost time you began to think about being a lady."

This was badinage. No failures had taught the Reverend Cecil that his
step-daughter had an ideal of him in which badinage had no place. She
merely supposed that he wished to be disagreeable.

She kept a mutinous silence. The old man sighed. It is one's duty to
correct the faults of one's child, but it is not pleasant. The
Reverend Cecil had not the habit of shirking any duty because he
happened to dislike it.

The mutton was taken away.

Betty, her whole being transfigured by the emotions of the morning,