“How about the marchioness?” shrilled Mrs. Duff-Chubleigh at her end of the phone, having first carefully glanced round to see that nobody was within hearing distance of her remarks. “She’s just as important to me as the Bishop of Scooter, or wherever it is, is to you. I don’t know why he should take such absurd unreasonable offence because Christian missions were unfavourably criticised; anyone might express an opinion on a subject of that sort, even to a colonial bishop. It’s a very different thing being called to your face a moth-eaten old hen. I hear that she is going to give a hunt ball at Cloudly this winter, and it’s quite probable that she’ll ask me over there for it. And now you want me to ruin everything and have a most unpleasant contretemps by taking that boy back under my roof. You can’t expect it of me. Besides, we can’t keep shifting Mr. Chermbacon backwards and forwards as though he was the regulator of an erratic clock. What do you say?”