"I suppose we ought to look studious," she said, "or they'll turn us out. I am so glad Aunt Alice isn't really worse. You don't know how I've felt while you've been away. It seemed so horribly selfish—to have been so happy and all while she was ill and worried. But, of course, you do know."
"Let us go out," he said, putting the books together.
"Yes," she said, "I know all about Bacon. Not that I'll ever want to know."
"I'm not so sure," said he. "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Baconians are right, and he was an intellectual giant, almost like Plato and Aristotle rolled into one? We'll go to Stratford some day, and look at Shakespeare's bust and see if we think he could have written 'The Tempest.'"
"You shouldn't judge people by their faces," she said. "Handsome is as handsome does."
"Oh, but you should," said he. "It's handsome does as handsome is. I always go by appearances. Don't you? But of course, I know you do—"
She opened one of the books and began to turn the pages. "Look what I found," she said, and all the time their voices had been lowered to the key of that studious place. "Look, isn't it pretty? And do you see?—the e's are like the Greek θ. Can you read it?"
He read:
"Fair Lucrece, kind Catherine, gentle Jane,
But Maria is the dearest name.
Robert Swinford, 1863."