"Oh, I know he was great," she burst out at last, "and what you read me out of the Life was nice. I like hearing about Sir Walter—but—"
I knew what was coming.
"But what?" I said, looking severely at the ground, so that I might be able to harden my heart against the pathos of Sweetheart's expression.
"But—I can't read the novels—indeed I can't. I have tried Waverley at least twenty times. And as for Rob Roy—"
Even the multiplication table failed here, and at this, variously a-sprawl on the turf beneath, the smaller fry giggled.
"Course," said Hugh John, who was engaged in eating grass like an ox, "we know it is true about Rob Roy. She read us one whole volume, and there wasn't no Rob Roy, nor any fighting in it. So we pelted her with fir-cones to make her stop and read over Treasure Island to us instead!"
"Yes, though we had heard it twenty times already," commented Sir Toady Lion, trying his hardest to pinch his brother's legs on the sly.
"Books wifout pictures is silly!" said a certain Maid Margaret, a companion new to the honourable company, who was weaving daisy-chains, her legs crossed beneath her, Turk fashion. In literature she had got as far as words of one syllable, and had a poor opinion even of them.
"I had read all Scott's novels long before I was your age," I said reprovingly.
The children received this announcement with the cautious silence with which every rising generation listens to the experiences of its elders when retailed by way of odious comparison.
