“Wait till I write my novel,” cried Rose. “Every one in it shall be clever,—English clever. It hurts my sense of the reality of the people in books to be told they are able, or this and that, and have sense of humor, and then not to find these qualities in what they say.”
“You may have too much of it,” he returned. “The mass of readers are unaccustomed to a selected world where to want to amuse and interest, and to be amused, is part, at least, of the social education. Your book would lack readers, just as George Meredith’s books do, where, surely, the people talk enough, both of brilliant wisdom and as shining wit.”
“But they keep me in a state of mental tension; I don’t like that.”
“No. I said there could be too much in a book, in a novel. These books keep one on a strain. That may suit some people, some moods, but it isn’t what I read novels for. Now, Cranford is my ideal.”
“I knew you would say Cranford, papa. But isn’t it a little too—too photographic? I met in the Tyrol, papa, a lady who knew many of the people in Cranford. Did you know it was called Knutsford?”
“Ah, Canute’s ford.”
“Yes. She told me such an odd thing about Knutsford. When a bride is on her way to the church the bridesmaids scatter sand before her, and this is because when Canute crossed the ford he was seated on the bank, and getting the sand out of his shoe,—and just then a bride came over the stepping-stones; the king cast the sand after her, and said, ‘May your offspring be as many as the sands in my shoe.’ Now, isn’t that a pretty story?”
“A very pretty story. I shall write it on the blank page of my Cranford.”
“Hullo, Tom; are those bear-tracks?”
They were close now to a sandy beach.