‘Jolly ride; about seventeen miles, Uncle Spines. I did as well as the rest, and we had a rare bit of fun at Poplars Weir. We were ferried over the water by Demosthenes and Cicero in person.’
‘Eh? How?’
Lesbia then gave extracts from the bargee record, which much amused the vicar, and much scandalised her mother and aunt.
‘This is your system of training girls, Theo, it seems!’ said his sister. ‘To send her out skylarking astride of a bicycle with a pack of roystering boys to hear bad language.’
‘I must tell Mr Lyttelhurst that you consider him a roystering boy,’ said the vicar, smiling.
‘But about the profane swearing, Theo,’ said his wife.
‘Oh, I assure you, Aunt Kate,’ said Lesbia suavely, ‘that the profane swearing was merely supplementary and ornamental—I should have just liked you and mamma to have heard the epithets those two bestowed on each other.’
‘Thank you kindly, Lesbia,’ said her mother; ‘I’d rather not.’
‘After all said and done,’ observed the vicar, ‘hard words break no bones. But when spoken before girls, they do break something else which it is most desirable should be broken.’
‘You mean their womanly delicacy,’ said Mrs Newman.
‘No, not quite that,’ he replied. ‘Not if you mean that delicacy which ought to be common to both sexes. But if you mean the prudish affectation which young ladies of the received pattern are taught to cultivate, then I say let it be annihilated at all costs—broken to atoms.’
