“I suppose it was something very learned you were reading,” she said, “when I came and called cuckoo and fetched you out sailing?”
“Rowing, you mean. Something learned! It was the ‘History of Sir Peter with the Silver Key and the Beautiful Magelone.’”
“By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. ‘Vigoleis with the Golden Wheel’ isn’t by anybody either, neither is ‘Bryde, the Hunter.’”
“I have never heard of those titles before.”
“Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no, that is quite likely, they aren’t fine books at all; they are the sort you buy from old women at fairs.”
“That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?”
“Always? I don’t read many books in the course of a year, and the kind I really like the best are those that have Indians in them.”
“But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?”
“Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at home, and Miss Holm--my mother’s companion--read them aloud after lunch and in the evenings; but I can’t say that I cared for them; I don’t like verse.”
“Don’t like verse? You said had, isn’t your mother living any more?”
He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl broke the silence:
“Yes, or other pictures, landscapes for instance?”
“Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well.”
“Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing.”
“But you must be something. You must do something?”
“Why, because--everybody does something!”
He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the face and asked:
“What do you mean by that?--No, don’t be angry with me; I will tell you something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it. You think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father was a fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I daresay he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the things they teach in the schools, and don’t care about them now either. Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee lady. When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into the garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her on my arm through the whole garden and park. I can still see her in her black gowns with the many wide laces....”