Sheaves by E.F. Benson — Read

The President of the "Literific," who was wonderfully well equipped for that office, for she habitually spent weeks in London every year, and during them positively lived in galleries, concert-rooms, and theatres and had been to Venice no less than four distinct times, was dining informally, "taking pot-luck," as Canon Alington expressed it, at his vicarage that night, and he could not but feel that it was a fortunate circumstance that Mrs. Owen should thus be dropping in while Hugh was there, for he distinctly liked Hugh to know that though they lived in the provinces they were not provincial, and that the pulse of artistic and intellectual life beat as strongly, if not more strongly, at Mannington than in town.

The last of Mrs. Alington's fortnightly dinners had taken place only the week before, so that it was impossible to parade the intellect of Mannington in its cohorts, but, as her husband dressed for dinner, he thought that this one informal guest would be likely to give Hugh a better notion of the high mental activity of Mannington than even one of the larger and more formal parties could have done. For Mrs. Owen, the brightest star in their intellectual constellation, really shone best alone, and Agnes often told her husband that he never talked half so well to her as he did to Mrs. Owen.