'Well, what have you got to say for yourself?'
After a few moments' silence she raised her head, staring before her with the fixed and desperate earnestness of a sensitive young creature who thinks the slightest blame a terrible thing to bear.
'I don't believe it was so very wrong,' she said at last. 'I was so very careful; I took off my boots that I had been out on the hills in, and put on clean shoes, not to hurt the carpet; and I just put down the notes so lightly I could not have hurt the piano, and I washed my hands before touching the books.'
'The books! What books have you been touching?'
'Oh, I took down several; but I couldn't read all, because they were not English.'
This was satisfactory as far as it went; but then the best English authors are considered scarcely more suitable reading for 'the young person' than the worst French ones.
'And which do you like best of the English ones?'
'I like one I found yesterday, all letters from different people, with the s's like f's.'
I poked the fire into a blaze, and led the girl back to the book-shelves.
'Now, show me which one you mean.'