"Do you eat your _dinner_ in those clothes?" demanded Miss Bancroft.
"Why? What's the matter with them? Why not eat dinner in 'em? My dear Elizabeth, surely at this late date you haven't taken it into your head to reform my habits?"
"I don't know but that I have," replied Miss Bancroft with a touch of grimness.
"Is that your ulterior motive? I suspected it. Tell me what you meant when you accused me just now of being hard and austere and unimaginative. Why unimaginative?"
"No really intelligent woman would ever try to explain anything so subtle to a man. I mean that you are unimaginative because you allow yourself to be rigid----"
"About your principles. I like you, Tom--you know how much. I admire you more than any man I have ever known, and I have known a good many remarkable men. But one thing I cannot forgive you is your principles."
"My principles? When did I ever offend you with principles?"
Miss Bancroft poured herself another cup of tea, and laid a second piece of bread-and-butter neatly on the side of her saucer.
"Come," said Mr. Prescott, with a keen glance at her. "Come, it's not like you, Elizabeth, to beat about the bush. What can this matter be which you find so difficult to broach in plain English?"
Miss Bancroft hesitated a moment. It touched her vanity to be accused of beating about the bush, since she took an especial pride in her reputation of being a woman who never minced matters, and who always made a direct and fearless attack.
"I came to talk to you about--George's daughters, Tom."
"It's not like you, Elizabeth, to--to touch upon a matter so very delicate," remarked Mr. Prescott, quietly, his lips tightening slightly. "Of course I can understand how my attitude in regard to them must appear to you, but I fancied that there existed between you and me a silent agreement that this was one subject which was never to be mentioned."
"My dear Tom, you know that under ordinary circumstances I am not an interfering woman; therefore you must realize that I should never have spoken of this to you without the best of reasons for doing so. But I feel that you are allowing certain principles, excellent no doubt in themselves, but wrong in your particular application to them, to thwart your own happiness; to say nothing of depriving others of the advantages which it is in your power to bestow." Miss Bancroft was very serious now. As she spoke she leaned over and laid her fat little hand earnestly on the old man's shabby sleeve. He said nothing, and she continued: