"'A purchase'"—she was reading again—"'is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. Do you not remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare—and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing—'
"Is n't this exactly our case?" she asked, interrupting herself for no other purpose than to prolong the passage she was reading.
"Truly," I replied, trying hard to hide a note of eagerness in my voice, for I had kept my battery masked these many months, "only Lamb wanted an old folio, whereas we need a new car. I have driven that old machine for five years and it was second-hand to begin with."
I watched for the effect of the shot, but evidently I had not got the range, for she was saying.
"Is there a sweeter bit in all of 'Elia' than this, do you think"?
"'—And when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—'"
She had paused again. To know when to pause! how to make the most of your author! to draw out the linked sweetness of a passage to its longest—there reads your loving reader!
"You see," laying her hand on mine, "old books and old friends are best, and I should think you had really rather have a nice safe old car than any new one. Thieves don't take old cars, as you know. And you can't insure them, that's a comfort! And cars don't skid and collide just because they are old, do they? And you never have to scold the children about the paint and—and the old thing does go—what do you think Lamb would say about old cars?"
"Lamb be hanged on old cars!" and I sent the sparks flying with a fresh stick.
"Well, then let's hear the rest of him on 'Old China.'" And so she read, while the fire burned, and outside swept the winter storm.