“Is that all? You must read books, you know. There’s so much empty space there back of your brows.”
She looked up smiling a little, her wide gray eyes puzzled.
“Yes, Joan. You must read. Will you—if I lend you some books?”
She considered. “Yes,” she said. “I’d read them if you’d be lendin’ me some. In the evenings when Pierre’s away, I’m right lonesome. I never was lonesome before, not to know it. It’ll take me a long time to read one book, though,” she added with an engaging mournfulness.
“What do you like—stories, poetry, magazines?”
“I’d like real books in stiff covers,” said Joan, “an’ I don’t like pictures.”
This surprised the clergyman. “Why not?” said he.
“I like to notion how the folks look myself. I like pictures of real places, that has got to be like they are”—Joan was talking a great deal and having trouble with her few simple words—“but I like folks in stories to look like I want ’em to look.”
“Not the way the writer describes them?”
“Yes, sir. But you can make up a whole lot on what the writer describes. If he says ‘her eyes is blue’; you can see ’em dark blue or light blue or jest blue. An’ you can see ’em shaped round or what not, the way you think about folks that you’ve heard of an’ have never met.”