'All the better,' said Wemyss. 'I don't want anybody to read my books.'
Lucy laughed, though she was dismayed inside. 'Oh Everard—' she said, 'not even me?'
'You? You're different. You're my own little girl. Whenever you want to, all you've got to do is to come and say, "Everard, your Lucy wants to read," and I'll unlock the bookcase.'
'But—I shall be afraid I may be disturbing you.'
'People who love each other can't ever disturb each other.'
'That's true,' said Lucy.
'And they shouldn't ever be afraid of it.'
'I suppose they shouldn't,' said Lucy.
'So be simple, and when you want a thing just say so.' Lucy said she would, and promised with many kisses to be simple, but she couldn't help privately thinking it a difficult way of getting at a book.
'Macaulay, Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, British Poets, English Men of Letters, Encyclopædia Britannica—I think there's about everything,' said Wemyss, going over the gilt names on the backs of the volumes with much satisfaction as he stood holding her in front of them. 'Whiteley's did it for me. I said I had room for so and so many of such and such sizes of the best modern writers in good bindings. I think they did it very well, don't you little Love?'