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.
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