"I had momentarily forgotten 'Schism,'" said Hester, dropping her glance.

"I went through a good deal of obloquy about 'Schism,'" said Mr. Gresley with pride, "and I should not wonder if 'Modern Dissent' caused quite a ferment in Middleshire. If it does, I am willing to bear a little spite and ill-will. All history shows that truth is met at first by opposition. Half the country clergy round here are asleep. Good men, but lax. They want waking up. I said as much to the Bishop the other day, and he agreed with me; for he said that if some of his younger clergy could be waked up to a sense of their own arrogance and narrowness he would hold a public thanksgiving in the cathedral. But he added that he thought nothing short of the last trump 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 Stück 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.