“I don’t see why you should suppose that anyone 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 anyone 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 Eskimo, but no London publisher would dream of reading his Epistle to the Ephesians.”

“Is there any asparagus in the garden?” asked Beryl; “because I’ve told cook⁠—”