"Thank you. I hope I shall not disturb you."
"Oh, no." He felt somehow he could answer for her. She was so gentle in her movements, and he really wanted to see how he liked having a little girl about. There was a vague idea in his mind that he might decide to have her here some day, since Miss Recompense had taken a sort of fancy to her.
Oh, what a luxury it was to wander softly about and read titles and look at bindings and speculate on what she would like! They had very few books at Uncle Leverett's. Some volume of sermons, a few biographies that she had found rather dreary, a history of the French-Canadian War, and some of Poor Richard's Almanacs, which she thought the most amusing of all.
There was a circulating library that Warren patronized occasionally. There was also the nucleus of a free library, but so far people had been too busy to think much about reading, except the scholarly minds. Books were expensive, too, and very few persons accumulated any stock of them. Of Mr. Adams' collection some had come to him from his father, and Cousin Charles, who had been called a "queer stick," had some English, Latin, and Italian poets that he had bequeathed to the book lover.
Winthrop Adams was a collector of several things beside books. Now and then at an auction sale on someone's death he picked up odd articles that were of value. And so his study was a kind of conglomerate. He had a cabinet of coins from different parts of the world and curios from India and Egypt. Napoleon's campaign in Egypt had awakened a good deal of interest in the country of the Pharaohs.
Doris was so still he glanced around presently. She was curled up in the corner of the chimney, a book on her knees and her head bent over until the curls fell about her in a cloud. When Elizabeth had spoken of the benefit it might be to a growing child to have them cut he had protested at once. They were rarely beautiful, he decided now, gleaming gold in the firelight.
She had a feeling presently that someone was looking at her, so she raised her head, shook away the curls, and smiled.
"Did you find something?"
"'The Vicar of Wakefield,' Uncle Winthrop. Oh, it is delightful! You said I might read anything!" with a touch of hesitation.
"That was quite a wide permission," and he smiled. He couldn't see how that would hurt anyone, but he was not sure of a girl's reading.