“Your aunt is a martinet, Helen,” Bransby grumbled smilingly. “She never lets me have my books about as I like them—and she is always losing my place.”
Helen laughed.
“Do you know,” her father continued, “I have found rare good sport in my books? Some of those chaps there—and Dickens especially—now—he was a card. Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Well, when I’m a bit low in my mind, I like to read it—more than any other book, I think—I find it sort of comforting. A man is never really lonely when he has books about him. Ah! I remember my place now—where Copperfield passes the blind beggar. It goes—let me see—yes: ‘He made me start by muttering as if he were an echo of the morning—“Blind—blind—blind.”’”
“I’m glad you find your books good company, Daddy.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Well—well—if—if we were ever parted, it would make me happy to think you had friends near you.”
Bransby laid his paper-weight down quickly and looked at his girl anxiously. “If we were ever parted? What do you mean, Helen?”
She turned from him a little as she replied softly, “Haven’t you—haven’t you ever looked forward to a time when we might be?”