mp would do it."

"I agree with him," said Hester, having first said the sentence to
herself, and having decided it was innocuous.

The climax of the music lesson had arrived. "The Blue Bells of
Scotland"--the sole _Clavier Stueck_ which Mary's rigidly extended little
starfishes of hands could wrench out of the school-room piano--was at
its third bar.

"Well," said Mr. Gresley, refreshed by a cheering retrospect. "Now for
'Modern Dissent.'"

A strenuous hour ensued.

Hester was torn in different directions, at one moment tempted to allow
the most flagrant passages to pass unchallenged rather than attempt the
physical impossibility of interrupting the reader only to be drawn into
a dispute with him, at another burning to save her brother from the
consequences which wait on certain utterances.

Presently Mr. Gresley's eloquence, after various tortuous and unnatural
windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage after following
the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears a villa. Hester had
seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see the villa through the
trees long before we are allowed to approach it, and she longed to save
her brother from what was in her eyes as much a degradation as a _tu
quoque_. But she remembered in time that the Gresleys considered she had
no sense of humor, and she decided to let it pass. Mr. Gresley enjoyed
it so much himself that he hardly noticed her fixed countenance.

Why does so deep a gulf separate those who have a sense of humor and
those who, having none, are compensated by the conviction that they
possess it more abundantly? The crevasse seems to extend far inland to
the very heights and water-sheds of character. Those who differ on humor
will differ on principles. The Gresleys and the Pratts belonged to that
large class of our fellow-creatures who, conscious of a genius for
adding to the hilarity of our sad planet, discover an irresistible
piquancy in putting a woman's hat on a man's head, and in that "verbal
romping" which playfully designates a whiskey-and-soda as a gargle, and
says "au reservoir" instead of "au revoir."

At last, however, Hester nervously put her hand over the next sheet, as
he read the final words of the last.

"Wait a moment," she said, hurriedly. "This last page, James. Might it
not be well to reconsider it? Is it politic to assume such great
ignorance on the part of Nonconformists? Many I know are better educated
than I am."

"M