"How true!" said Sybell. "I have often thought it, but I never could put
it into words as you do. Oh! how I agree with you and Mr. Harvey! As I
often say to Hester, 'How can you describe anything if you don't go
anywhere or see anything? I can't give you my experience. 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."