Some, of course, had other
bodily infirmities, but they always had rheumatism as well. The Rector
had not yet grasped the fact that in rural cottage life not to have
rheumatism is as glaring an omission as not to have been presented at
Court would be in more ambitious circles. And with all this death of
local interest there was Beryl shutting herself off with her ridiculous
labours on _The Forbidden Horsepond_.
"I don't see why you should suppose that any one wants to read Baptiste
Lepoy in English," the Reverend Wilfrid remarked to his wife one morning,
finding her surrounded with her usual elegant litter of dictionaries,
fountain pens, and scribbling paper; "hardly any one bothers to read him
now in France."
"My dear," said Beryl, with an intonation of gentle weariness, "haven't
two or three leading London publishers told me they wondered no one had
ever translated _L'Abreuvoir interdit_, and begged me--"
"Publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written,
and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written. If St. Paul
were living now they would pester him to write an Epistle to the
Esquimaux, but no London publisher would dream of reading his Epistle to
the Ephesians.
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