“What are you readin', Albert?” she asked, after a few' minutes vigorous wielding of the dust-cloth. “It must be awful interestin', you stick at it so close.”
The Black Knight was just then hammering with his battle-axe at the gate of Front de Buef's castle, not minding the stones and beams cast down upon him from above “no more than if they were thistle-down or feathers.” Albert absently admitted that the story was interesting. The housekeeper repeated her request to be told its name.
“Ivanhoe,” replied the boy; adding, as the name did not seem to convey any definite idea to his interrogator's mind: “It's by Walter Scott, you know.”
Mrs. Ellis made no remark immediately. When she did it was to the effect that she used to know a colored man named Scott who worked at the hotel once. “He swept out and carried trunks and such things,” she explained. “He seemed to be a real nice sort of colored man, far as ever I heard.”
Albert was more interested in the Black Knight of Ivanhoe than the black man of the hotel, so he went on reading. Rachel sat down in a chair by the window and looked out, twisting and untwisting the dust-cloth in her lap.
“I presume likely lots and lots of folks have read that book, ain't they?” she asked, after another interval.
“What? Oh, yes, almost everybody. It's a classic, I suppose.”
“What's that?”
“What's what?”
“What you said the book was. A class-somethin' or other?”