"We should never cease to give thanks if we could find out, dear lady," answered Utterly. "I'll give you a hundred dollars a word for any authentic information about Shakespeare, and a thousand for any about Homer. Homer and Shakespeare have been dead for centuries and men are still trying to find out about them. And will keep on trying," he added.
When Utterly was well out of sight, Dr. Lister took his wife's hand.
"Why, my dear! What is it?"
Mrs. Lister turned upon him a gray face. She looked old, terrified, distraught.
"That is a wolfish man," said she. "Make them leave poor Basil in his grave! I will tell nothing about Basil. I have nothing to tell about him."
CHAPTER VI A NEW PIANO
Richard Lister had been a placid, comfortable baby, though his birth had followed a period of deep anguish in his mother's life. To her he was a miracle, an incredible phenomenon, his dependence upon her for every need of his little being the most heavenly experience she had ever had. He slept a proper and wholesome number of hours and remained awake long enough for ample petting, and for the first twelve years of his life he was scarcely out of her sight. She tended him awake and watched him while he slept, enduring with considerable pain the sight of him in the arms of any one except his father or Thomasina Davis or 'Manda.
When he was five years old, she entered upon a period of anxiety whose beginning she had set for this time. She compelled herself to realize that she could not have him always; that the small imitations of mannish clothes which he wore would be presently exchanged for full-grown originals which he would put on and off without her aid. He would have, moreover, some day a wife who would supersede his mother in the delectable kingdom of his heart.