“Sixteen!”, he repeated, “you don’t look it but you speak as if you had been well educated.” I smiled; I had already measured the crass ignorance of the peasants in the steerage.
“Have you any friends in America?” he asked.
“What do you want to question me for?” I demanded, “I’ve paid for my passage and I’m doing no harm.”
“I want to help you”, he said, “will you stay here until we draw out and I get a little time?”
“Certainly”, I said, “I’d rather be here than with those louts and if I might read your books—”
I had noticed that there were two little oak bookcases, one on each side of the washing-stand, and smaller books and pictures scattered about.
“Of course you may”, he rejoined and threw open the door of the bookcase. There was a Macaulay staring at me.
“I know his poetry”, I said, seeing that the book contained his “Essays” and was written in prose. “I’d like to read this.”
“Go ahead”, he said smiling, “in a couple of hours I’ll be back.” When he returned he found me curled upon his sofa, lost in fairyland. I had just come to the end of the essay on Clive and was breathless. “You like it?” he asked. “I should just think I did”, I replied, “it’s better even than his poetry”, and suddenly I closed the book and began to recite:
“With all his faults, and they were neither few nor small, only one cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In the Great Abbey—”