"I'm glad to see you home again," said Ellen.
He came forward and took her hand in both of his. Fetzer advancing for a second time heard him ask, "Where's Fetzer?" and moved forward. It was for her he inquired! Surely he had not seen in poor Ellen's eyes that betraying look which she had seen!
CHAPTER XXIX
GRANDFATHER AND AMOS MAKE DISCOVERIES
Amos had acquired during the past winter a considerable addition to his library. The publishers added the famous tales of "Père Goriot" and "Madame Bovary" to their lists, and in accordance with the suggestions of the clerk in the department store he was advised of their publication. He read no more at lightning speed, but allowed himself only a small portion each day. To teach school, to keep house, to cultivate a garden, to read in the evenings—it was a life common to thousands of prosaic citizens, but to him it was a life of wicked and surreptitious adventure. In April he received a copy of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and with it, by a packer's error, a recently published and enormously popular story advocating an unremitting optimism in all the circumstances of life, a gladness which nothing could disturb, all-pervading as the air. He read it, sitting on a bench in the grove above Cocalico Creek.
"'I'm so happy that I sing for joy,' said little Mary. 'I just make up my mind to be glad, that's all that's necessary. I make everybody round me glad.'"
He looked with astonishment at the printed word. Was he to pay good money for this? A succession of strange expressions appeared upon his handsome face and finally a grin, all-embracing, malicious. In this fashion a lion might mock an unstockaded village.
Suddenly he rose and hurled the book with good aim exactly into the middle of the creek where it sank heavily; then he laughed a silly laugh. Life was not like that; life was orgiastic, sinister, monstrous!
In June he went to look after his supply of books. The Thinker's Library was not growing with sufficient rapidity for him, and now that his school was closed and he had so many long, idle hours he needed occupation. The day was rainy and cool and dismally unseasonable, and Grandfather looked at him in astonishment. The translation of "The Mystic Dove" was long, long overdue, but Grandfather still had implicit faith in its completion; Amos was slow, but spiritual tasks were not to be hurried.