f his own pocket as well. But as long as the public is
willing to pay through the nose for trashy fiction to amuse its
idleness, so long will novelists reap in these large harvests. If I had
Hester's talent--"

"You have. Mrs. Loftus was saying so only yesterday."

"If I had time to work it out, I should not pander to the depraved
public taste as Hester does. I should use my talent, as I have often
told her, for the highest ends, not for the lowest. It would be my aim,"
Mr. Gresley's voice rose sonorously, "to raise my readers, to educate
them, to place a high ideal before them, to ennoble them."

"You could do it," said Mrs. Gresley, with conviction. And it is
probable that the conviction both felt was a true one; that Mr. Gresley
could write a book which would, from their point of view, fulfil these
vast requirements.

Mr. Gresley shook his head, and put the parcel on a table in his study.

"Hester will be back the day after to-morrow," he said, "and then she
can take charge of it herself." And he filled in the railway form of its
receipt.

Mrs. Gresley, who had been to tea with the Pratts for the first time
since her convalescence, was tired, and went early to bed; or, as Mr.
Gresley termed it, "Bedfordshire"; and Mr. Gresley retired to his study
to put a few finishing touches to a paper he was writing on St.
Augustine--not by request--for that receptacle of clerical genius, the
parish magazine.

Will the contents of parish magazines always be written by the clergy?
Is it Utopian to hope that a day will dawn when it will be perceived
even by clerical editors that Apostolic Succession does not invariably
confer literary talent? What can an intelligent artisan think when he
reads--what he reads--in his parish magazine? A serial story by a Rector
unknown to fame, who, if he possesses talent, conceals it in some other
napkin than the parish magazine; a short paper on "Bees," by an
Archdeacon; "An Easter Hymn," by a Bishop, and such a good bishop,
too--but what a hymn! "Poultry-Keeping," by Alice Brown. We draw breath,
but the relief is only momentary. "Side Lights on the Reformation," by
a Canon. "Half-hours with the Young," by a Rural Dean.

But as an invalid will rebel against a long course of milk puddings, and
will crave for the jam roll which is for others, so Mr. Gresley's mind
revolted from St. Augustine, and craved for something different.

His wandering eye fell on Hester's book.

"I can't attend to