"What have you read to-day?"
"I finished Gulliver."
"What did you think of it?"
"Why, somehow, it seemed just like it might be true."
"As if it might be true, Francis—what did I tell you?" Her tone grew severe, almost pedagogic. "You must be careful of your talk, my boy! Never forget; it is important. You'll never get on if you're careless and common. You will often be judged by your speech. What else did you read?"
"I tried Montaigne's Essays, but I couldn't understand much. It seemed so dull to me. But there's one, Whether the Governor of a Place Besieged Ought Himself to go out to Parley. I like that!"
Madam Grant laughed. "I'd like to have known Montaigne; he was a kind of old maid, but he was a modern, after all; common sense will do if you can't get humor."
"Where did you get all these books, Mamsy?"
Her face grew blank again; her eyes wandered. She recited in a sort of croon:
"Heard, have you? what? they have told you he never
repented his sin.
How do they know it? are they his mother? are you of
his kin?"