“That’s right. Find out if Craig Mason is here. I am awfully tired and don’t believe I shall get up for ever so long. If he is here you will see him and tell me what manner of man he is; what he likes and dislikes, so I can like and dislike the same. I don’t know why, but I fancy he may be bookish. Did you bring Tennyson?”
“Yes.”
“And English Literature?”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
“Taine’s.”
“All right. I guess I can master enough of him to talk about. Won’t you bring me Tennyson before you go? I may look him over a little. It is well to have a favorite poet, and he’ll do as well as any body. I know about that poem, ‘Why don’t you speak for yourself, John,’ and should do just as Priscilla did. Wasn’t that her name? and was it Whittier who wrote it, or Longfellow?”
“Longfellow,” Alice answered, as she went for Tennyson’s poems.
“Find the ‘May Queen,’ and put the book on the bed,” Helen said.
Alice did so, and started to leave the room, when her cousin called her back and whispered very low, as if afraid the walls might hear, “I want to know who that tall man is who carried me in his arms through the rain, and spoke so like a gentleman. I can’t get him out of my mind. He held me so delicately, as if it were a pleasure, but one for which he ought to apologize.”