“Then let me send to Toronto and get you a few hundred cards. We’ll have them here in a day or two.”
“Oh, I don’t want to put you to that trouble.”
“It is no trouble at all. Now, that is settled, let us attack the catalogue. Have you a blank book anywhere about? We will first make an alphabetical list; then we will arrange them under the heads of history, biography, fiction, and so on.”
Simple as it appeared, the making of a catalogue took a long time. Both were absorbed in their occupation. Cataloguing in itself is a straight and narrow path, but in this instance there were so many delightful side excursions that rapid progress could not be expected. To a reader the mere mention of a book brings up recollections. Margaret was reading out the names; Renmark, on slips of paper, each with a letter on it, was writing them down.
“Oh, have you that book?” he would say, looking up as a title was mentioned. “Have you ever read it?”
“No; for, you see, this part of the library is all new to me. Why, here is one of which the leaves are not even cut. No one has read it. Is it good?”
“One of the best,” Renmark would say, taking the volume. “Yes, I know this edition. Let me read you one passage.”
And Margaret would sit in the rocking while he cut the leaves and found the place. One extract was sure to suggest another, and time passed before the title of the book found its way to the proper slip of paper. These excursions into literature were most interesting to both excursionists, but they interfered with cataloguing. Renmark read and read, ever and anon stopping to explain some point, or quote what someone else had said on the same subject, marking the place in the book, as he paused, with inserted fore finger. Margaret swayed back and forth in the comfortable rocking chair, and listened intently, her large dark eyes fixed upon him so earnestly that now and then, when he met them, he seemed disconcerted for a moment. But the girl did not notice this. At the end of one of his dissertations she leaned her elbow on the arm of the chair, with her cheek resting against her hand, and said:
“How very clear you make everything, Mr. Renmark.”
“Do you think so?” he said with a smile. “It’s my business, you know.”