Hester found herself suddenly transplanted into the prose of life, emphasized by a long clerical coat and a bed of Brussels sprouts.
"I missed you," said Mr.Gresley, with emphasis.
"Where?
When ?" Hester's eyes had lost their fixed look and stared vacantly at him.
Mr.Gresley tried to subdue his rising annoyance.
Hester was acting, pretending not to understand, and he saw through it.
"At God's altar," he said, gravely, the priest getting the upper hand of the man.
"Have you not found me there ?" said Hester, below her breath, but so low that fortunately her brother did not catch the words, and was spared their profanity.
"I will appeal to her better feelings," he said to himself.

"They must be there, if I can only touch them." He did not know that in order to touch the better feelings of our fellow-creatures we must be able to reach up to them, or by reason of our low stature we may succeed only in appealing to the lowest in them, in spite of our tiptoe good intentions.

Is that why such appeals too often meet with bitter sarcasm and indignation?
But fortunately a robust belief in the assiduities of the devil as the cause of all failures, and a conviction that who-so opposed Mr.Gresley opposed the Deity, supported and blindfolded the young Vicar in emergencies of this kind.
He spoke earnestly and at length to his sister.

He waved aside her timid excuse that she had overslept herself after a sleepless night, and had finished dressing but the moment before he found her in the garden.

He entreated her to put aside such insincerity as unworthy of her.