Now and then, on a Sunday evening, the rector would say to his wife, “Look here, Rosie, I could read Haroun’s mind to-day as he sat under the pulpit, as though it were a book in large primer type, open before me. He was very attentive when I began my sermon, and he followed me some way, but by degrees his eye became vacant, abstracted, his expression of face altered, and I knew that he was away with the Three Calenders, hearing why Zobeide whipped the hounds.”
“Harry,” responded the rectoress, “you have only yourself to blame. Try to be more interesting when you preach.”
“My dear Rosie,” exclaimed the parson, “I do my level best, but what pulpit discourse could ever compete with ‘Sindbad’s Voyages’ or ‘The Hunchback’?”
The good lady sighed and said, “Whatever will Haroun do for a wife? We have no Fatimas and Zobeides in this village.”
“I wish with all my heart that Haroun would weave his own web of romance, fall in love, and—then he’d forget the ‘Arabian Nights.’”
“In time this infatuation will wear off.”
“I doubt it. This has now been going on for years, and that book only works its way deeper into his soul. Upon my word, Rosie, I believe the Bible interests him only because of the wonders that are in it.”
“Then, my dear, I am sure you judge him wrong. He is a good man, and God-fearing.”
“Yes—but oh! so fantastical.”