She felt, I think, the failure of her efforts; and kind as Cousin Anne is, there is, I think, a certain vagueness of outline about her mind.  I would not call her a fatalist, but she has little conception of the possibility of moulding character;—­it’s a rich mind, but perhaps an indecisive mind?  Maud needed a vocation—­she needed an aim.  And then, too, you have perhaps observed—­or possibly,” said the Vicar gleefully, “she has effaced that characteristic out of deference to your own great power of amiable toleration—­but she had a certain incisiveness of speech which had some power to wound?  I will give you a small instance.  Gibbs, the schoolmaster, is a very worthy man, but he has a certain flightiness of manner and disposition.  Dear Maud, talking about him one day at our luncheon-table, said that one read in books how some people had to struggle with some underlying beast in their constitution, the voracious man, let us say, with the pig-like element, the cruel man with the tiger-like quality.  ‘Mr. Gibbs,’ she said, ’seems to me to be struggling not with a beast, but with a bird.’  She went on very amusingly to say that he reminded her of a wagtail, tripping along with very short steps, and only saved by adroitness from overbalancing.  It was a clever description of poor Gibbs—­but I felt it somehow to be indiscreet.  Well, you know, poor Gibbs came to me a few days later—­you realise how gossip spreads in these places—­and said that he was hurt in his mind to think that Miss Maud should call him a water-wagtail.  Servants’ tattle, I suppose.  I was considerably annoyed at this, and Maud insisted on going to apologise to Gibbs, which was a matter of some delicacy, because she could not deny that she had applied the soubriquet—­or is it sobriquet?—­to him.  That is just a minute instance of the sort of thing I mean.”

“I confess,” said Howard, “that I do recognise Maud’s touch—­she has a strong sense of humour.”

“A somewhat dangerous thing,” said Mr. Sandys.  “I have a very strong sense of humour myself, or rather what might be called risibility.  No one enjoys a witty story or a laughable incident more than I do.  But I keep it in check.  The indulgence of humour is a risky thing; not very consistent with the pastoral office.  But that is a small point; and what I am leading up to is this, that dear Maud’s restlessness, and even morbidity, has entirely disappeared; and this, my dear Howard, I attribute entirely to your kind influence and discretion, of which we are all so conscious, and to the consciousness of which it is so pleasant to be able to give leisurely expression.”

But the Vicar was not always so fruitful a talker as this.  The difficulty with him was to shift the points.  There were long walks in Mr. Sandys’ company which were really of an almost nightmare quality.  He had a way of getting into a genealogical mess, in which he used to say that it cleared the air to be able to state the difficulties.