“I have never heard of those titles before.”
“Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.—Oh no, that is quite likely, they aren’t fine books at all; they are the sort you buy from old women at fairs.”
“That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?”
“Always? I don’t read many books in the course of a year, and the kind I really like the best are those that have Indians in them.”
“But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?”
“Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at home, and Miss Holm—my mother’s companion—read them aloud after lunch and in the evenings; but I can’t say that I cared for them; I don’t like verse.”
“Don’t like verse? You said had, isn’t your mother living any more?”
“No, neither is my father.”
He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl broke the silence:
“Do you like paintings?”