“For you,” I smiled. “Please play on. You can’t guess how pleasant it is, how–how–homelike.”
She wheeled back and let her hands fall on the keys, rippling by a natural suggestion into the old tune “Amaryllis.” The logs were crackling. The gay old measures flooded the room with sound. My head nodded in time, as I stacked the books on the shelves.
Suddenly the music stopped, and with a rustle of skirts the girl was beside me. “There! Now I must help you with the books!” she cried. “What’s this? Oh, you’re not putting them up right at all! Here’s James’s ’Pragmatism’ hobnobbing with ’The Freedom of the Will.’ Oh, horrors, and ’Cranford’ next to Guy de Maupassant! I’m sure that isn’t proper!”
“On the contrary,” said I, “it ought to prove a fine thing for both of them.”
She began to inspect titles, pulling out books here, substituting others there, carrying some to other cases. “You won’t know where anything is, anyhow, in these new surroundings,” she said, “so you might as well start right–separate cases for fiction, history, philosophy, and so on. Please have the poetry over the settle by the fire.”
“Surely,” said I. “That goes without saying. Here, I’ll lug the books in, and you put ’em up. Only I insist on the reference books going over by my desk.”
“Yes, sir, you may have them,” she laughed.
I wheeled in load after load. “Lord,” I cried, “of the making of many books, et cetera! I’ll never buy another one, or else I’ll never move again.”
“You’ll never move again, you mean,” said she. “Look, all the nice poetry by the west fireplace. Don’t the green Globe editions look pretty in the white cases? And Keats right by the chimney. Please, may I put the garden books, and old Mr. Thoreau, by the east fire?”
“Give old Mr. Thoreau any seat he wants,” said I, “only Mr. Emerson must sit beside him.”