Love’s Logic and Other Stories/Prudence and the Bishop

PRUDENCE AND THE BISHOP
MISS PRUDENCE was astonishingly pretty; it was far from tedious to lie on the bank of the stream and watch her, while her second brother—a lanky youth of fifteen—fished for non-existent trout with an entirely unplausible fly.
"So Clara Jenkins said that about me?"
I nodded. "Just let it fall, you know, Miss Prudence, in the give-and-take of conversation."
"If you weren't a stranger in our neighborhood, you wouldn't pay any attention to what a girl like that says."
"Oh, but it was about you," I protested.
Prudence looked at me as if she were thinking that I might have been amusing when I was young.
"What was the word Clara used?" she asked.
"There were two words. 'Calculating' was one."
"Oh, was it?"
"Yes. The other was 'heartless.'"
"I like that! It's only what mama tells me."
"Your mother tells you?" My tone indicated great surprise: her mother is the vicar's wife, and the alleged counsel seemed unpastoral.
"Yes—and it's quite right too," Prudence maintained. "You know how poor we are. And there are eight of us!"
"Five and three?"
"Yes: Johnny at Oxford, Dick at school, and Clarence to go soon! And the girls—you know what girls cost, anyhow!"
"They vary, I

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