CLOSE in a sheltered corner in our parlor there stood a bookcase. It had
two glass doors, and a brass key, and rows and rows of books that looked
out invitingly on the world, and seemed to say, "Come, read me." On the
bottom shelf of all there were children's books,--"The Child's History
of England," "Plutarch's Lives" in brown and gold, a green "Ivanhoe," a
red "Alice in Wonderland," and a fat blue book, "The Child's Own Book of
Fairy Tales," with rubbed corners, and loose leaves, and a crooked
signature on the front page that read, painstakingly, "Rhoda Harcourt."
These were my books, my dear, dear books, and with them comes a memory
of hours spent in a window-seat, of dusky evenings when the firelight
lit an absorbing page, and of elderly comment heard over my head.
"How she reads!" my father said, enviously. "I was just like that when I
was a boy."
"The child will have no eyes," my grandmother complained.
"She must know them by heart," my mother added.
I did know them pretty thoroughly, but when I tired of old friends I had
only to climb up a shelf higher to find new ones. "Japheth in Search of
a Father," "The Mill on the Floss," and "Les Miserables," stood just
above my head, and there were stories of children in all of these,--the
most entrancing stories that opened a window into a glorious golden
world of ideality and romance. It was such a wide world! People did
things there. They lived and loved, and when they died the event stamped
itself on my mind with a pathos that made me cry from sheer pity.
"I wish Rhoda wouldn't read so many books," my mother said. "She excites
herself over them. She is so different from other children of her age!"
She said it half complainingly and half exultingly. Somehow I knew that
my mother liked me to read, and that she liked me to be a little
different from other children. Sometimes she bragged about it in a mild
way to chance callers.
"Rhoda reads the oddest things," I heard her tell two ladies. "When I
was a little girl I liked to read 'The Wide, Wide World,' but she likes
novels and histories."
The older visitor glanced at me up in my corner. It was "Les
Miserables" that day, I remember, and their talk played on the surface
of my mind while my heart was busy with Cosette.
"Does she go to school?" she asked.
"No," my mother faltered.
The ladies looked at each other.
"What! At her age! Why, who teaches her?" they demanded, in a shocked
chorus.
"I do myself--sometimes," my mother answered, still falteringly.
"Take my advice," the visitor with the black eyes said, decisively, "and
send that child to school. Why it's a shame! It isn't fair to the
child."
"When she grows up she will regret it," the one with the tight mouth
added.
"She isn't strong," my mother explained. "We have kept her at home on
that account; but I suppose, yes, I suppose, that she ought to go to
school."
She looked at me a moment in a worried fashion, and then brightened, a
trifle of her old pride returning.
"She has the greatest stock of general information," she confided,
whisperingly. "She astonishes me sometimes. She does, indeed."
The two ladies shook their heads.
"I don't approve of children knowing too much," the one with the black
eyes cried.
"And novels!" the other breathed, evidently appalled.
After they were gone my mother took the book out of my hand, and read a
page or two of it in a frightened way. She smoothed my hair, and looked
at me anxiously.
"Why do you like this book, Rhoda?" she asked.
"Because it's about a little girl, mother," I answered.