“It makes me think,” she said, and he perceived that she meant the sea, “of the cold-white, heavy plunging foam in ‘The Dream of Fair Women.’ The words always seemed drenched!”
“Ah, Tennyson, yes,” said Breckon, with a disposition to smile at the simple-heartedness of the literary allusion. “Do young ladies read poetry much in Ohio?”
“I don’t believe they do,” she answered. “Do they anywhere?”
“That’s one of the things I should like to know. Is Tennyson your favorite poet?”
“I don’t believe I have any,” said Ellen. “I used to like Whither, and Emerson; aid Longfellow, too.”
“Used to! Don’t you now?”
“I don’t read them so much now,” and she made a pause, behind which he fancied her secret lurked. But he shrank from knowing it if he might.
“You’re all great readers in your family,” he suggested, as a polite diversion.
“Lottie isn’t,” she answered, dreamily. “She hates it.”
“Ah, I referred more particularly to the others,” said Breckon, and he began to laugh, and then checked himself. “Your mother, and the judge—and your brother—”