CHAPTER XVIII.
Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages.
-- LA FONTAINE.
If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a word with Hester, she was doomed to disappointment.

Mr.Gresley took the seat on the sofa beside Rachel which Ada Pratt had vacated, and after a few kindly eulogistic remarks on the Bishop of Southminster and the responsibilities of wealth, he turned the conversation into the well-worn groove of Warpington.
Rachel proved an attentive listener, and after Mr.Gresley had furnished her at length with nutritious details respecting parochial work, he went on: "I am holding this evening a temperance meeting in the Parish Room.

I wish, Miss West, that I could persuade you to stay for it, and thus enlist your sympathies in a matter of vital importance." "They have been enlisted in it for the last ten years," said Rachel, who was not yet accustomed to the invariable assumption on the part of Mr.
Gresley that no one took an interest in the most obvious good work until he had introduced and championed it.

"But," she added, "I will stay with pleasure." Dick, who was becoming somewhat restive under Mrs.Gresley's inquiries about the Newhavens, became suddenly interested in the temperance meeting.
"I've seen many a good fellow go to the dogs through drink in the Colonies, more's the pity," Dick remarked.

"I think I'll come too, James.