_Tomes._ Perhaps so. But they are very often in each other's company.

_Grey._ And then, of course, the evil taints the reputation of the good,
even with thinking men like you; and how much more with those who have
your prejudices without your sense! But note well that they are not
oftener in company--these tastes and vices--than honesty and meanness,
good-nature and clownishness, sincerity and brutality, hospitality and
debauchery, chastity and the absence of that virtue without which all
others are as nothing. And let me remind you, by the way, that we of
this age and generation make it our business, in fact, feel it our duty,
to violate the injunction of the English Catechism, and get _out_ of
that state of life in which we find ourselves, into a better, as soon
as possible. And even old Mother Church does not insist upon content so
strongly as you made her seem to do; she speaks of the state of life to
which her catechumen "shall" be, not "has" been, called; and thus
makes it possible for a dean to resolve to be content with a bishopric,
and a bishop to muse upon the complete satisfaction with which he would
grasp an archbishop's crosier, without forfeiture of orthodoxy.

Tomes would doubtless have replied; but at this point the attention of
the disputants was attracted by the rustle of silk; there was a light,
quick tap at the glass-door which separated the den of books from the
middle room, and before an answer could be given the emblazoned valves
opened partly, and a sweet, decided voice asked, "Please, may we come
in? or" (and the speaker opened the doors wide) "are you and Mr. Tomes
so absorbed in construing a sentence in a book that nobody ever reads,
that ladies must give place to lexicons?"

"Enter, of course," cried Grey, "and save me from annihilation by