She asked me what my views in life were.

Ah, thought I, now it's coming; and I answered modestly that everything depended on circumstances.

I might have said it depended on the demand for brass bedsteads; but perhaps that would have verged on indelicacy--you know that I am delicacy personified.

'I thought,' said Miss Birching, 'that a man of any energy made his own circumstances ?' 'Energy!' I shouted.

'Do you look for energy in _me_?
It's the greatest compliment anyone ever paid me.' At that she seemed desperately annoyed, and wouldn't pursue the subject.