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162 looks rather like a man who would. People who have nothing to say always do preach long sermons, don't they? They keep hoping they will have something to say presently, I suppose."

"And they hope out loud," said Madame Valtesi. "People who hope out loud are very trying. I know so many. Dear me, how dusty it is! I feel as if I were drowning. Are we nearly there?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Windsor; "there is the common—that is the common where Mr. Smith has checked the rowdyism. I wish he had not broken up all the idle comers before we came. I should so like to have met one."

"Mr. Smith has decidedly been premature," Amarinth said gravely. "Clergymen often are. They take away our sins before we have had time to sit down with them. There go the school children, I suppose. They look intensely clean. So many people look intensely clean, and nothing else. That is all one can say about them. Half the men I know have absolutely no other characteristic. Their only talent is that they know how to wash. Perhaps that is why men of genius so seldom wash. They are afraid of being mistaken for men of talent. What will happen when we come into church. Will everybody stand up?"