"I don't know," said Irene, still intent upon the convolutions of the
shaving. "She keeps us laughing. Papa thinks there's nobody that can
talk like her." She gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took
the parasol up across her lap. The unworldliness of the Lapham girls
did not extend to their dress; Irene's costume was very stylish, and
she governed her head and shoulders stylishly. "We are going to have
the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," she said abruptly.
"Yes?" returned Corey. "I should think that would be charming."
"We expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants to build the
shelves in."
The fact seemed to be referred to Corey for his comment.
"It seems to me that would be the best way. They'll look like part of
the room then. You can make them low, and hang your pictures above
them."
"Yes, that's what he said." The girl looked out of the window in
adding, "I presume with nice bindings it will look very well."
"Oh, nothing furnishes a room like books."
"No. There will have to be a good many of them."
"That depends upon the size of your room and the number of your
shelves."
"Oh, of course! I presume," said Irene, thoughtfully, "we shall have to
have Gibbon."
"If you want to read him," said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an
imaginable joke.
"We had a great deal about him at school. I believe we had one of his
books. Mine's lost, but Pen will remember."
The young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, "You'll want
Greene, of course, and Motley, and Parkman."
"Yes. What kind of writers are they?"
"They're historians too."
"Oh yes; I remember now. That's what Gibbon was. Is it Gibbon or
Gibbons?"
The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy.
"Gibbon, I think."
"There used to be so many of them," said Irene gaily. "I used to get
them mixed up with each other, and I couldn't tell them from the poets.
Should you want to have poetry?"
"Yes; I suppose some edition of the English poets."
"We don't any of us like poetry. Do you like it?"
"I'm afraid I don't very much," Corey owned. "But, of course, there
was a time when Tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now."
"We had something about him at school too. I think I remember the
name. I think we ought to have ALL the American poets."
"Well, not all. Five or six of the best: you want Longfellow and
Bryant and Whittier and Holmes and Emerson and Lowell."
The girl listened attentively, as if making mental note of the names.
"And Shakespeare," she added. "Don't you like Shakespeare's plays?"
"Oh yes, very much."
"I used to be perfectly crazy about his plays. Don't you think
'Hamlet' is splendid? We had ever so much about Shakespeare. Weren't
you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays of his
there were? I always thought there was nothing but 'Hamlet' and 'Romeo
and Juliet' and 'Macbeth' and 'Richard III.' and 'King Lear,' and that
one that Robeson and Crane have--oh yes! 'Comedy of Errors.'"
"Those are the ones they usually play," said Corey.
"I presume we shall have to have Scott's works," said Irene, returning
to the question of books.
"Oh yes."
"One of the girls used to think he was GREAT. She was always talking
about Scott." Irene made a pretty little amiably contemptuous mouth.
"He isn't American, though?" she suggested.
"No," said Corey; "he's Scotch, I believe."
Irene passed her glove over her forehead. "I always get him mixed up
with Cooper. Well, papa has got to get them. If we have a library, we
have got to have books in it. Pen says it's perfectly ridiculous
having one. But papa thinks whatever the architect says is right. He
fought him hard enough at first. I don't see how any one can keep the
poets and the historians and novelists separate in their mind. Of
course papa will buy them if we say so. But I don't see how I'm ever
going to tell him which ones." The joyous light faded out of her face
and left it pensive.
"Why, if you like," said the young man, taking out his pencil, "I'll
put down the names we've been talking about."
He clapped himself on his breast pockets to detect some lurking scrap
of paper.
"Will you?" she cried delightedly. "Here! take one of my cards," and
she pulled out her card-case. "The carpenter writes on a three-cornered
block and puts it into his pocket, and it's so uncomfortable he can't
help remembering it. Pen says she's going to adopt the
three-cornered-block plan with papa."
"Thank you," said Corey. "I believe I'll use your card." He crossed
over to her, and after a moment sat down on the trestle beside her.
She looked over the card as he wrote. "Those are the ones we
mentioned, but perhaps I'd better add a few others."
"Oh, thank you," she said, when he had written the card full on both
sides. "He has got to get them in the nicest binding, too. I shall
tell him about their helping to furnish the room, and then he can't
object." She remained with the card, looking at it rather wistfully.
Perhaps Corey divined her trouble of mind. "If he will take that to
any bookseller, and tell him what bindings he wants, he will fill the
order for him."
"Oh, thank you very much," she said, and put the card back into her
card-case with great apparent relief. Then she turned her lovely face
toward the young man, beaming with the triumph a woman feels in any bit
of successful manoeuvring, and began to talk with recovered gaiety of
other things, as if, having got rid of a matter annoying out of all
proportion to its importance, she was now going to indemnify herself.
Corey did not return to his own trestle. She found another shaving
within reach of her parasol, and began poking that with it, and trying
to follow it through its folds. Corey watched her a while.
"You seem to have a great passion for playing with shavings," he said.
"Is it a new one?"
"New what?"
"Passion."
"I don't know," she said, dropping her eyelids, and keeping on with her
effort. She looked shyly aslant at him. "Perhaps you don't approve of
playing with shavings?"
"Oh yes, I do. I admire it very much. But it seems rather difficult.
I've a great ambition to put my foot on the shaving's tail and hold it
for you."
"Well," said the girl.
"Thank you," said the young man. He did so, and now she ran her
parasol point easily through it. They looked at each other and
laughed. "That was wonderful. Would you like to try another?" he
asked.
"No, I thank you," she replied. "I think one will do."
They both laughed again, for whatever reason or no reason, and then the
young girl became sober. To a girl everything a young man does is of
significance; and if he holds a shaving down with his foot while she
pokes through it with her parasol, she must ask herself what he means
by it.
"They seem to be having rather a long interview with the carpenter
to-day," said Irene, looking vaguely toward the ceiling. She turned
with polite ceremony to Corey. "I'm afraid you're letting them keep
you. You mustn't."
"Oh no. You're letting me stay," he returned.
She bridled and bit her lip for pleasure. "I presume they will be down
before a great while. Don't you like the smell of the wood and the
mortar? It's so fresh."
"Yes, it's delicious." He bent forward and picked up from the floor the
shaving with which they had been playing, and put it to his nose.
"It's like a flower. May I offer it to you?" he asked, as if it had
been one.
"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She took it from him and put it into her
belt, and then they both laughed once more.
Steps were heard descending. When the elder people reached the floor
where they were sitting, Corey rose and presently took his leave.
"What makes you so solemn, 'Rene?" asked Mrs. Lapham.
"Solemn?" echoed the girl. "I'm not a BIT solemn. What CAN you mean?"
Corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking across the
table at his father, he said, "I wonder what the average literature of
non-cultivated people is."
"Ah," said the elder, "I suspect the average is pretty low even with
cultivated people. You don't read a great many books yourself, Tom."
"No, I don't," the young man confessed. "I read more books when I was
with Stanton, last winter, than I had since I was a boy. But I read
them because I must--there was nothing else to do. It wasn't because I
was fond of reading. Still I think I read with some sense of
literature and the difference between authors. I don't suppose that
people generally do that; I have met people who had read books without
troubling themselves to find out even the author's name, much less
trying to decide upon his quality. I suppose that's the way the vast
majority of people read."
"Yes. If authors were not almost necessarily recluses, and ignorant of
the ignorance about them, I don't see how they could endure it. Of
course they are fated to be overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor
fellows; but to see it weltering all round them while they are in the
very act of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. I
don't suppose that we who have the habit of reading, and at least a
nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness
of the great mass of people--even people whose houses are rich and
whose linen is purple and fine. But occasionally we get glimpses of
it. I suppose you found the latest publications lying all about in
Lapham cottage when you were down there?"