hardly any one else will so understand
it."

The clock struck ten. Mr. Gresley was amazed. The hour had seemed like
ten minutes.

"I will just see what happens in the next chapter," he said. And he did
not hear the clock when it struck again. The story was absorbing. It was
as if through that narrow, shut-up chamber a gust of mountain air were
sweeping like a breath of fresh life. Mr. Gresley was vaguely stirred
in spite of himself, until he remembered that it was all fantastic,
visionary. He had never felt like that, and his own experience was his
measure of the utmost that is possible in human nature. He would have
called a kettle visionary if he had never seen one himself. It was only
saved from that reproach by the fact that it hung on his kitchen hob.
What was so unfair about him was that he took gorillas and alligators,
and the "wart pig" and all its warts on trust, though he had never seen
them. But the emotions which have shaken the human soul since the world
began, long before the first "wart pig" was thought of--these he
disbelieved.

All the love which could not be covered by his own mild courtship of the
obviously grateful Mrs. Gresley, Mr. Gresley put down as exaggerated.
There was a good deal of such exaggeration in Hester's book, which could
only be attributed to the French novels of which he had frequently
expressed his disapproval when he saw Hester reading them. It was given
to Mr. Gresley to perceive that the French classics are only read for
the sake of the hideous improprieties contained in them. He had
explained this to Hester, and was indignant that she had continued to
read them just as frequently as before, even translating parts of some
of them into English, and back again into the original. She would have
lowered the Bishop forever in his Vicar's eyes, if she had mentioned by
whose advice and selection she read, so she refrained.

Suddenly, as he read, Mr. Gresley's face softened. He came to the
illness and death of a child. It had been written long before Regie fell
ill, but Mr. Gresley supposed it could only have been the result of what
had happened a few weeks ago since the book was sent up to the
publisher.

Two large tears fell on to the sheet. Hester's had been there before
them. It was all true, every word. Here was no exaggeration, no
fantastic overcoloring for the sake of effect.

"Ah, Hester!" he said, wiping his eyes. "If only the rest were like
that. If you would only write