"Then when each copybook is complete—I will let you know—get Leah to copy it out; she writes a very good, legible business hand. All will arrange itself....
"And now, get the books and begin reading them. I shall not be ready to write, nor will you, for more than a month.
"Keep this from everybody but Leah; don't even mention it to Maurice until I give you leave—not but what's he's to be thoroughly trusted. You are fortunate in your wife and your friend—I hope the day will come when you will find you have been fortunate in your
"Martia."
Here follows a list of books, but it has been more or less carefully erased; and though some of the names are still to be made out, I conclude that Barty did not wish them to be made public.
Before Roberta was born, Leah had reserved herself an hour every morning and every afternoon for what she called the cultivation of her mind—the careful reading of good standard books, French and English, that she might qualify herself in time, as she said, for the intellectual society in which she hoped to mix some day; she built castles in the air, being somewhat of a hero-worshipper in secret, and dreamt of meeting her heroes in the flesh, now that she was Barty's wife.
But when she became a mother there was not only Roberta who required much attention, but Barty himself made great calls upon her time besides.
To his friends' astonishment he had taken it into his head to write a book. Good heavens! Barty writing a book! What on earth could the dear boy have to write about?
He wrote much of the book at night in bed, and corrected and put it into shape during the daytime; and finally Leah had to copy it all out neatly in her best handwriting, and this copying out of Barty's books became to her an all but daily task for many years—a happy labor of love, and one she would depute to no one else; no hired hand should interfere with these precious productions of her husband's genius. So that most of the standard works, English and French, that she grew to thoroughly master were of her husband's writing—not a bad education, I venture to think!