Margaret took the book, and was surprised to find how easy a process it is to read aloud passably without taking in a word of the sense. Fortunately the Greys were not much given to make remarks on what they read. To have gone through the books that came from the Society was enough; and they could not have accomplished the forty pages an evening if they had stopped to talk. The only words spoken during the lecture, therefore, were occasional remarks that the reader seemed hoarse, and that some one else had better take the book; and whispered requests across the table for scissors, thread, or the adjustment of the light. Such being the method of literary exercise in the family, Hester and Margaret were able to think of anything they pleased with impunity.
“There! here comes papa!” said Sophia; “and I do not believe we have read nearly forty pages. Where did you begin, Margaret?”
Margaret resigned the volume to her to have the place found, and was told that she should not have shifted the marker till the evening reading was done, unless she at once set it forward forty pages: it made it so difficult to find the place. Sophia was detained only five minutes from her collar, however, before she discovered that they had read only eight-and-twenty pages. Mrs Grey observed that Mr Grey was coming in rather earlier than usual to-night; and Sophia added, that her cousins had been a good while in their own room.
Hester was conscious that Mr Grey cast a rapid, penetrating glance upon her as he drew his chair, and took his seat at her elbow.
“What a clever book this is!” said Mrs Grey.
“Very entertaining,” added Sophia.
“What is your opinion of it?” asked Mr Grey of Hester.
She smiled, and said she must read more of it before she could judge.
“It is such a relief,” said Mrs Grey, “to have a book like this in hand after the tiresome things Mr Rowland orders in! He consults Mrs Rowland’s notions about books far too much; and she always takes a fancy to the dullest. One would almost think it was on purpose.”
Sydney liked the sport of knocking on the head charges against the Rowlands. He showed, by a reference to the Society’s list, that the book just laid down was ordered by the Rowlands.