She leant placidly back. Cecil wondered why Lucy had been amused.

“I tell you who has no 'fences,' as you call them,” she said, “and that's Mr. Beebe.”

“A parson fenceless would mean a parson defenceless.”

Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant. She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feeling that prompted it.

“Don't you like Mr. Beebe?” she asked thoughtfully.

“I never said so!” he cried. “I consider him far above the average. I only denied — ” And he swept off on the subject of fences again, and was brilliant.

“Now, a clergyman that I do hate,”