Hilary also read to them occasionally, and his reading was another source of secret admiration to their mother. He never read them anything but what his wife would have described, and rightly, too, as "far beyond them"; such things as Spenser, Shakespeare, Sheridan, or Milton, even; and he always read with such a mock-serious air as Sir Henry Irving used in the scene where Charles I recites poetry to his children. His wife on such occasions, though perfectly content with her rôle of Henrietta Maria, would reflect that if she tried to read such things to them they would be fidgeting and walking about the room and longing for her to stop, instead of sitting spellbound, as they did when he read, on the arms of his chair and breathlessly following each word of the text.
With another parent and with other children such reading would have proved utterly sterile, but from it the boys managed to absorb a good deal of pleasure and the germs of literary appreciation as well, and the words of many a great passage in many a great author became dear to them long before they were able to grasp their full meaning. Results of their literary sessions would crop out in the family intercourse in sundry curious ways. One instance may serve to illustrate this. The family were sitting about together one day after lunch; Edith Wimbourne had a pile of household mending before her.
"I declare," she said, "these tablecloths have simply rotted away from lying in that dark closet; they would have lasted much better if they had been used a little."
"She let concealment," said Hilary from behind a magazine, "like a worm i' the bud, feed—what did concealment feed on, James?"
"Feed on her damask—"
"Tablecloth!" shouts Harry, brilliantly but indiscreetly.
"Oh, shut up," retorts his brother, peevishly, as who would not, at having the words snatched from his mouth? "You needn't be so smart, I was going to say that anyway."
"The heck you were!"
"Yes, I was."
"You were not! You were going to say 'cheek'; I saw you start to say it."