“Why should I want to slight you, Gillian?” replied Lora with the angelic smile that distinguished her, as, throwing aside the little white scarf around her head and shoulders, she came forward to the fire, and leaning against the high mantelpiece put a foot upon the fender, looking frankly the while into the sombre face of the other girl.
“Oh, well,—oh, well!” muttered Gillian after a moment. “’Tis well you’re angel-like, since so soon you’ll see them.”
“What say you, Gillian? ’Tis well I’m what, said you?”
“Nay, sit you down, maiden,—sit you here in the Elder’s chair and put your feet to the fire, upon his footstool. There, now, be biddable and meek, as fits your face.”
“Why, Jill, ’twas but yesterday that you almost smote Betty Alden to the ground because she would have sat in that chair; and after all, ’tis not half so comfortable as mother’s splint chair.”
“Oh, ay,” replied Gillian, as she turned toward the bookcase and began brushing the books with a wild turkey’s wing, “that’s different,—that’s different. I wouldn’t have let you sit there but for what I saw a minute gone by.”
“What you saw!” echoed Lora, not overmuch moved, for Gillian’s vagaries had long since been voted insoluble by the simple folk of The Nook. “And what was’t you saw?”
“Now, now! Can you read, Lora?”
“Yes. Father taught me when I was but a little trot. I learned as fast as the boys, he said.”
“Well, a priest taught me just as a man of the outside world would have taught a parrot or an ape. All the people who have done me any good have done it for their pleasure or their pride, and I’m naught beholden to them. But these books!—I often spell out their titles when I’m dull, and tired of laughing at men and women. Now hark you, Lora, here’s some of ’em: