ketch
of Guizot--a caustic sketch of Renan. Robert presently even laid aside
his pipe, and stood in his favourite attitude, lounging against the
mantelpiece, looking down, absorbed, on his visitor. All that
intellectual passion which his struggle at Mile End had for the moment
checked in him revived. Nay, after his weeks of exclusive contact with
the most hideous forms of bodily ill, this interruption, these great
names, this talk of great movements and great causes, had a special
savour and relish. All the horizons of the mind expanded, the currents
of the blood ran quicker.

Suddenly, however, he sprang up.

'I beg your pardon? Mr. Wendover, it is too bad to interrupt you--I have
enjoyed it immensely--but the fact is I have only two minutes to get to
Sunday School in!'

Mr. Wendover rose also, and resumed his ordinary manner.

'It is I who should apologise,' he said with stiff politeness, 'for
having encroached in this way on your busy day, Mr. Elsmere.'

Robert helped him on with his coat, and then suddenly the squire turned
to him.

'You were preaching this morning on one of the Isaiah quotations in St.
Matthew. It would interest you, I imagine, to see a recent Jewish book
on the subject of the prophecies quoted in the Gospels which reached me
yesterday. There is nothing particularly new in it, but it looked to me
well done.'

'Thank you,' said Robert, not, however, with any great heartiness, and
the squire moved away. They parted at the gate, Robert running down the
hill to the village as fast as his long legs could carry him.

'Sunday School--pshaw!' cried the squire, as he tramped homeward in the
opposite direction.

Next morning a huge packing-case arrived from the Hall, and Robert could
not forbear a little gloating over the treasures in it before he tore
himself away to pay his morning visit to Mile End. There everything was
improving; the poor Sharland child indeed had slipped away on the night
after the squire's visit, but the other bad cases in the diphtheria ward
were mending fast. John Allwood was gaining strength daily, and poor
Mary Sharland was feebly struggling back to a life which seemed hardly
worth so much effort to keep. Robert felt, with a welcome sense of
slackening strain, that the daily and hourly superintendence which he
and Catherine had been giving to the place might lawfully be relaxed,
that the nurses on the spot were now more than equal to their task, and
after having made hi