Les sots sont plus à craindre que les méchans.

MR. GRESLEY had often remarked to persons in affliction that when things are at their worst they generally take a turn for the better. This profound truth was proving itself equal to the occasion at Warpington Vicarage.

Mrs. Gresley was well again, after a fortnight at the seaside with Regie. The sea air had blown back a faint colour into Regie’s cheeks. The new baby’s vaccination was ceasing to cast a vocal gloom over the thin-walled house. The old baby’s whole attention was mercifully diverted from his wrongs to the investigation of that connection between a chair and himself, which he perceived the other children could assume at pleasure. He stood for hours looking at his own little chair, solemnly seating himself at long intervals where no chair was. But his mind was working, and work, as we know, is the panacea for mental anguish.

Mr. Gresley had recovered that buoyancy of spirits which was the theme of Mrs. Gresley’s unceasing 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. “Waterproof 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 notepaper, 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.”

“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 graver things to-night,” he said, “I will take a look at Hester’s story. I showed her my paper on ‘Dissent,’ so of course I can dip into her book. I hate lopsided confidences, and I daresay I could give her a few hints, as she did me. Two heads are better than one. The Pratts and Thursbys all think that bit in ‘The Idyll’ where the two men quarrelled was dictated by me. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t, but no doubt she picked up her knowledge of men which surprises people so much from things she has heard me say. She certainly did not want me to read her book. She said I should not like it. But I shall have to read it some time, so I may as well skim it before it goes to the printers. I have always told her I did not feel free from responsibility in the matter after ‘The Idyll’ appeared with things in it which I should have made a point of cutting out if she had only consulted me before she rushed into print.”

Mr. Gresley lifted the heavy mass of manuscript to his writing-table, turned up his reading-lamp and sat down before it.

The church clock struck nine. It was always wrong, but it set the time at Warpington.

There were two hours before bedtime — I mean “Bedfordshire.”

He turned over the first blank sheet and came to the next, which had one word only written on it.

“Husks!“ said Mr. Gresley. “That must be the title. Husks that the swine did eat. Ha! I see. A very good sound story might be written on that theme of a young man who left the Church, and how inadequate he found the teaching — the spiritual food — of other denominations compared to what he had partaken freely of in his Father’s house. Husks! It is not a bad name, but it is too short. ‘The Consequences of Sin’ would be better, more striking, and convey the idea in a more impressive manner.” Mr. Gresley took up his pen, and then laid it down. “I will run through the story before I alter the name. It may not take the line I expect.”

It did not.

The next page had two words on it:

“TO RACHEL.”

What an extraordinary thing! Any one, be they who they might, would naturally have thought that if the book were dedicated to any one it would be to her only brother. But Hester, it seemed, thought nothing of blood relations. She disregarded them entirely.

The b............