No one can.' I said that to her only a month ago, when she refused to come up to London with me." Rachel's white face and neck had taken on them the pink transparent color that generally dwelt only in the curves of her small ears.
"Why do you think Miss Gresley is ignorant of the life she describes ?" she said, addressing the apostle.
The author and the apostle both opened their mouths at the same moment, only to register a second triumph of the female tongue.
Miss Barker was in her element.

The whole table was listening.

She shrugged her orange-velvet shoulders.
"Those who have cast in their lot with the poor," she said, sententiously, "would recognize at once the impossibility of Miss Gresley's characters and situations." "To me they seem real," said Rachel.
"Ah, my dear Miss West, you will excuse me, but a young lady like yourself, nursed in the lap of luxury, can hardly be expected to look at life with the same eyes as a poor waif like myself, who has penetrated to the very core of the city, and who has heard the stifled sigh of a vast perishing humanity." "I lived in the midst of it for six years," said Rachel.

"I did not cast in my lot with the poor, for I was one of them, and earned my bread among them.

Miss Gresley's book may not be palatable in some respects, the district visitor and the woman missionary are certainly treated with harshness, but, as far as my experience goes, _The Idyll_ is a true word from first to last." There was in Rachel's voice a restrained force that vaguely stirred all the occupants of the room.