I thought I addressed this in my first reply, but I can't find it now. So if its a duplicate, sorry for the double post.

>it is one of several alternatives available to a developer.

So is using a registry value, INI file, or any flat file for that matter. The called class can populate one of these things, and the calling procedure can look at these resources for the return value. Sounds very familiar to your private variables idea, however, this is even more flexible. Would you advocate that approach as well?