It is a constant source of friction.

But, on the other hand, the best thing that could happen to Hester is to be thrown for a time among people who regard her as a nonentity, who have no sense of humor, and to whom she cannot speak of any of the subjects she has at heart.

If Hester had remained in London after the success of her _Idyll_ she would have met with so much sympathy and admiration that her next book would probably have suffered in consequence.

She is so susceptible, so expansive, that repression is positively necessary to her to enable her, so to speak, to get up steam.

There is no place for getting up steam like a country vicarage with an inner cordon of cows round it and an outer one of amiable country neighbors, mildly contemptuous of originality in any form.