Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing; if feminine capacity may compass it.

Why, bless my heart, every word of it is French!" The rector threw down his spectacles, and gazed at his wife reproachfully.

But she smiled with superior innocence.
"What else could you expect, after all his years abroad?
I cannot make out the whole of it, for certain.

But surely it is not beyond the compass of masculine capacity." "Yes, it is, Maria; and you know it well enough.

No honest Englishman can endure a word of French.