"I should choose the books," she said, quite fiercely.
"How spiteful you are to those fowls!" he said.
"So would you be, if you had been looking after them all your life," Joan answered, still more fiercely.
"There is no doubt about you being a volcanic young lady," Hieronymus remarked thoughtfully. "But I understand. I was also a volcano once. I am now extinct. You will be extinct after a few years, and you will be thankful for the repose. But one has to go through a great many eruptions as preliminaries to peace."
"Any kind of experience is better than none at all," Joan said, more gently this time. "You can't think how I dread a life in which nothing happens. I want to have my days crammed full of interests and events. Then I shall learn something; but here--what can one learn? You should just see Auntie Lloyd, and be with her for a quarter of an hour. When you've seen her, you've seen the whole neighborhood. Oh, how I dislike her!"
Her tone of voice expressed so heartily her feelings about Auntie Lloyd that Hieronymus laughed, and Joan laughed too.
She had put on her bonnet, and stood ready to go home. The historian stroked Gamboge, put away his papers, and expressed himself inclined to accompany Joan part of the way.
He ran to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Benbow that he would not be long gone.
"Dinner won't be ready for quite an hour," she said, "as the butcher came so late. But here is a cup of beef-tea for you. You look rather tired."
"I've had such a lot of pastry," Hieronymus pleaded, and he turned to Mr. Benbow, who had just come into the kitchen followed by his faithful collie. "I don't feel as though I could manage the beef-tea."