Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.

— EMERSON.

“OF course, Hester,” said Mr. Gresley, leading the way to his study and speaking in his lesson-for-the-day voice, “I don’t pretend to write”—(“They always say that,” thought Hester)—“I have not sufficient leisure to devote to the subject to ensure becoming a successful author. And even if I had I am afraid I should not be willing to sell my soul to obtain popularity, for that is what it comes to in these days. The public must be pandered to. It must be amused. The public likes smooth things, and the great truths — the only things I should care to write about — are not smooth, far from it.”

“No, indeed.”

“This little paper on ‘Dissent,’ which I propose to publish in pamphlet form after its appearance as a serial — it will run to two numbers in the Southminster Advertiser — was merely thrown off in a few days when I had influenza, and could not attend to my usual work.”

“It must be very difficult to work in illness,” said Hester, who had evidently made a vow during her brief sojourn in the garden, and was now obviously going through that process which the society of some of our fellow creatures makes as necessary as it is fatiguing — namely, that of thinking beforehand what we are going to say.

Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed herself flat under one of these resolutions. He was wont to say that no one was pleasanter than Hester when she was reasonable, or made more suitable remarks. He perceived with joy that she was reasonable now, and the brother and sister sat down close together at the writing-table with the printed sheets between them.

“I will read aloud,” said Mr. Gresley, “and you can follow me, and stop me if you think — er — the sense is not quite clear.”

“I see.”

The two long noses, the larger freckled one surmounted by a pince-nez, the other slightly pink as if it had absorbed the tint of the blotting-paper over which it was so continually poised, both bent over the sheets.

Through the thin wall which separated the schoolroom from the study came the sound of Mary’s scales. Mary was by nature a child of wrath, as far as music was concerned, and Fraülein — anxious, musical Fraülein — was strenuously endeavouring to impart to her pupil the rudiments of what was her chief joy in life.

“Modern Dissent,” read aloud Mr. Gresley, “by Veritas.”

“Veritas!“ repeated Hester. Astonishment jerked the word out of her before she was aware. She pulled herself hastily together.

“Certainly,” said the author, looking at his sister through his glasses, which made the pupils of his eyes look as large as the striped marbles on which Mary and Regie spent their pennies. “Veritas,” he continued, “is a Latin word signifying Truth.”

“So I fancied. But is not Truth rather a large name to adopt as a nom de guerre? Might it not seem rather — er — in a layman it would appear arrogant.”

“I am not a layman, and I do not pretend to write on subjects of which I am ignorant,” said Mr. Gresley with dignity. “This is not a work of fiction. I don’t imagine this, or fancy that, or invent the other. I merely place before the public forcibly and in a novel manner a few great truths.”

Mary was doing her finger exercises. C C C with the thumb, D D D with the first finger. Fraülein was repeating, “Won! Two! Free! Won! Two! Free!” with a new intonation of cheerful patience at each repetition.

“Ah!” said Hester. “A few great truths. Then the name must be Veritas. You would not reconsider it.”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Gresley, his eye challenging hers. “It is the name I am known by as the author of ‘Schism.’”

“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 Klavier Stück which Mary’s rigidly extended little starfishes of hands could wrench out of the schoolroom piano — was at its third bar.

“Well,” said Mr. Gresley, refreshed by a cheering retrospects. “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 humour, 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 humour 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 humour 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 whisky 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.”

“My dear,” said Mr. Gresley, “ignorance is at the root of any difference of opinion on such a subject as this. I do not say wilful ignorance, but the want of sound Church teaching. I must cut at the roots of this ignorance.”

“Dear James, it is thrice killing the slain. No one believes these fallacies which you are exposing; the Nonconformists least of all. Those I have talked with don’t hold these absurd opinions that you put down to them. You don’t even touch their real position. You are elaborately knocking down ninepins that have never stood up because they have nothing to stand on.”

“I am not proposing to play a game of mental skittles,” said the clerical author. “It is enough for me, as I said before, to cut at the roots of ignorance wherever I see it flourishing, not to pull off the leaves one by one as you would have me to do by dissecting their opinions. This may not be novel, it may not even be amusing, but nevertheless, Hester, a clergyman’s duty is to wage unceasing war against spiritual ignorance. And what,” read on Mr. Gresley, after a triumphant moment in which Hester remained silent, &ldquo............