"O I am not studying."
"What have you got there that interests you so much, then? to be bending over it like that."
Now Matilda was afraid to say she was reading the Bible, knowing in what abhorrence David held part of her Bible; so she answered with a quick sort of instinct, "It was only a chapter in Isaiah, David."
"Isaiah!" he repeated; "our Isaiah? Let me see, please."
He took the book and looked keenly at the page.
"What interested you so here, Matilda?"
"I was reading that little twelfth chapter. I was thinking of those 'wells of salvation.'"
She was trembling with the fear of saying something or other to displease him, afraid to answer at all; but the simplest answer seemed the best; and she prayed for wisdom and boldness. David was looking hard at the page, and alternately at her.
"It is our Isaiah," he said, turning the leaves back and forward; "it is our Scriptures; but not the Hebrew. I shall learn to read the Hebrew. What were you thinking about the 'wells of salvation,' Matilda?"
Matilda was getting very nervous; but as before, she answered simply the truth.