"You also!" said Mrs. Lewis, with a grimace. "Own, now, that they jolt horribly—that the Browning Pegasus is a racker, and that the Browning road up Parnassus is macadamized with—well, diamonds, if you will, but diamonds in the rough. True, the hoofs do make dents; they do dash over the ground with a four-footed trampling; but—" a shrug and a shiver completed the sentence.
"Mrs. Browning needs a lapidary," Mr. Granger said; "but her husband's constipated style is a necessity. His books are books of quintessences. At first I thought him suggestive; but soon perceived that he was stimulating instead. He seems to have brushed a subject. Look again, and you will see that he has exhausted it."
Margaret read the titles of the books, and in them read, also, something of the minds of her new associates. There were a few shining names from each of the great nations, and a good selection of English and American authors, the patriarchs in their places. She had a word for each, but thought, "I wonder why I like Lowell, almost in silence, yet like him best."
Near this was another case of books, all Oriental, or relating to the Orient. There were the Talmud and the Koran; there were hideous mythologies full of propitiatory prayers to the devil. There were Vathek, The Arabian Nights, Ferdousi, and a hundred others. Over this case hung an oval water-color of sea and sky with a rising sun blazing at the horizon, lighting with flickering gold a path across the blue, liquid expanse, and flooding with light the ethereal spaces. On a scroll beneath this was inscribed, "Ex Oriente Lux."
"Light and hasheesh," said Mr. Southard laughingly. "Don't linger there too long."
Mr. Granger called Dora to him. "What has my little girl been learning to-day?" he asked.
The little one's eyes flashed with a sudden, glorious recollection. "O papa! I can spell cup."
The father was suitably astonished.
"Is it possible? Let me hear."
The child raised her eyebrows, and played the coquette with her erudition. "You spell it," she said tauntingly.