"Do you read these books?"
"Yes. They are all I have to read. I have not read the whole of them."
"No, I suppose not. Do you not find this reading rather heavy?"
"I don't know. Some of the books are rather heavy; I do not read those much."
"You must let me look at your library some day, Miss Diana. It would be certain to have charms for me; and I'll exchange with you. Perhaps I have books that you would not find heavy."
Diana's full grey eyes turned on the minister with a gleam of gratitude and pleasure. Her words were not needed to say that she would like that kind of barter.
"So your father was a clergyman?" Mr. Masters went on.
"Yes. Not here, though. That was when I was quite little. We lived a good way from here; and I remember very well a great many things about all that time, till father died, and then mother came back here."
"Came back,—then your mother is at home in Pleasant Valley?"
"O, we're both at home here—I was so little when we came; but mother's father lived where Nick Boddington does, and owned all this valley—I don't mean Pleasant Valley, but all this hollow; a good large farm it was; and when he died he left mother a nice piece of it, with this old house."