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.”

“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.