Mr. Gresley had recovered that buoyancy of spirits which was the theme of Mrs. Gresley's increasing admiration.

On this particular evening, when his wife had asked him if the beef were tender, he had replied, as he always did if in a humorous vein: "Douglas, Douglas, tender and true." The arrival of the pot of marmalade (that integral part of the mysterious meal which begins with meat and is crowned with buns) had been hailed by the exclamation, "What! More family jars." In short, Mr. Gresley was himself again.

The jocund Vicar, with his arm round Mrs. Gresley, proceeded to the drawing-room.

On the hall table was a large parcel insured for two hundred pounds. It had evidently just arrived by rail.

"Ah! ha!" said Mr. Gresley. "My pamphlets at last. Very methodical of Smithers insuring them for such a large sum," and, without looking at the address, he cut the string.

"Well packed," he remarked. "Water-proof sheeting, I do declare. Smithers is certainly a cautious man. Ha! at last!"

The inmost wrapping shelled off, and Mr. Gresley's jaw dropped. Where were the little green and gold pamphlets entitled "Modern Dissent," for which his parental soul was yearning? He gazed down frowning at a solid mass of manuscript, written in a small, clear hand.

"This is Hester's writing," he said. "There is some mistake."

He turned to the direction on the outer cover.

"Miss Hester Gresley, care of Rev. James Gresley." He had only seen his own name.

"I do believe," he said, "that this is Hester's book, refused by the publisher. Poor Hester! I am afraid she will feel that."

His turning over of the parcel dislodged an unfolded sheet of note-paper, which made a parachute expedition to the floor. Mr. Gresley picked it up and laid it on the parcel.

"Oh! it's not refused, after all," he said, his eye catching the sense of the few words before him. "Hester seems to have sent for it back to make some alterations, and Mr. Bentham—I suppose that is the publisher—asks for it back with as little delay as possible. Then she has sold it to him. I wonder what she got for it. She got a hundred for The Idyll. It is wonderful to think of, when Bishop Heavysides got nothing at all for his Diocesan sermons, and had to make up thirty pounds out of 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."