“A man is a fool to pronounce an opinion on a book before he has had the last page read to him,” he said. “I have only been touching upon the part that I have heard, and I say that it seems to me to be as good as anything I have read for years; but that is not saying that the remainder, or some portions of the remainder, may not be so greatly inferior as to compel me to pronounce unfavourably of the book as a whole. I have had instances of such inequality shown by many writers, and it may be that the writer of ‘Evelina’ will be added to the list, although he shows no sign of falling off up to your last page. Do not be hurried by me, my dear, but if you have indeed made up your mind to eat no cheese, Mrs. Hamilton can remove the débris, and unless you are tired, you will read me a few pages more.”
She read until midnight. The only pauses that she made were when he trimmed the wicks of the candles. He commended her fluency. She had never read better in his hearing, he said. She showed that she understood what she was reading; and that, after all, was the greatest praise that could be given to anyone. He did not suggest the likelihood that she was tired.
There was the sound of the bleating of lambs occasionally borne from the meadows beyond the little stream—the sound of an owl that came nightly about the house from the barn of the farm a few hundred yards away—the sound of a large moth bumping against the glass of the casement through which the candle-light shone. There was nothing to interrupt her in her delightful task until the church clock struck the hour of midnight.
“Not another line,” she cried, jumping from her chair. “Poor Evelina! she will be the better for a sleep. When she awakens she may be able to see more clearly who are her true friends and who are not to be trusted. Good-night, dear Daddy; and receive my thanks for your attention.”
“Give me the volume,” he said. “I usually awake before six, and so shall have a couple of hours of it before rising.”
“You will not get it from me, sir,” she cried. “Captain Mervain knows the naval rule about drinking glass for glass, and let me tell you that the same rule holds in the matter of reading a book—chapter for chapter between us, sir; we shall finish as we have begun.”
She blew him a kiss and ran upstairs to escape his protests: he shouted them after her from the foot of the stairs.