"Oh," she cried, "how—how you have been neglected!"
She was really depressed, but her protégée was so much more deeply so that she felt it her duty to contain herself and return to cheerfulness.
"Never mind," she said. "I will tell you all I know about them, and,"—after a pause for speculative thought upon the subject,—"by-the-by, it isn't much, and I will lend you some books to read, and give you a list of some you must persuade your father to buy for you, and you will be all right. It is rather dreadful not to know the names of people and things; but, after all, I think there are very few people who—ahem!"
She was checked here by rigid conscientious scruples. If she was to train this young mind in the path of learning and literature, she must place before her a higher standard of merit than the somewhat shady and slipshod one her eagerness had almost betrayed her into upholding. She had heard people talk of "standards" and "ideals," and when she was kept to the point and in regulation working order, she could be very eloquent upon these subjects herself.
"You will have to work very seriously," she remarked, rather incongruously and with a rapid change of position. "If you wish to—to acquire anything, you must read conscientiously and—and with a purpose." She was rather proud of that last clause.
"Must I?" inquired Louise, humbly. "I should like to—if I knew where to begin. Who was Worth? Was he a poet?"
Miss Ferrol acquired a fine, high color very suddenly.
"Oh," she answered, with some uneasiness, "you—you have no need to begin with Worth. He doesn't matter so much—really."
"I thought," Miss Rogers said meekly, "that you were more troubled about my not having read what he wrote, than about my not knowing any of the others."
"Oh, no. You see—the fact is, he—he never wrote anything."