Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/139

 scent off the women's clothes. It's just for a moment. Then I'm back with the flatness again; with what you call the moral platitudes; with the clergy and their matins and evensong; their thin, sharp spires; and their gardens, with little laburnum trees in them, and rose bushes, and strawberry beds; and all the things they say, the quite true things they keep on saying every day. But they smother me. I kick and plunge to get air to breathe. That's how I came to write that story. I'm not a vicious man. I'm not a hypocrite."

"I don't profess to enter fully into your feelings," I said. "But I'm extremely interested. Go on plunging, by all means; but don't kick all the bed clothes off. Remember the decencies and leave a sheet. One sheet won't smother you. And send everything you write to us. It will do you good to get rid of it even if we can't print it."

I went back to London by the afternoon train and told Egerton about the Reverend Mr. Metcalf. He was greatly interested, and agreed with me that we should keep an eye on the curate with a view to securing something from him which it would be possible for us to publish. I promised to have a talk with him next time I paid a visit to my uncle. Unfortunately, most unfortunately as it turned out, I was not able to get away from the office for nearly two months. Then, when I was in a position to run down to Cambridgeshire for a couple of days, I heard that my uncle was ill. The doctor, who was