"It came a little before DANIEL DERONDA."
The girl was again silent. She followed the curl of a shaving on the floor with the point of her parasol.
"Do you like that Rosamond Vincy?" she asked, without looking up.
Corey smiled in his kind way.
"I didn"t suppose she was expected to have any friends. I can"t say I liked her. But I don"t think I disliked her so much as the author does. She"s pretty hard on her good-looking"--he was going to say girls, but as if that might have been rather personal, he said--"people."
"Yes, that"s what Pen says. She says she doesn"t give her any chance to be good. She says she should have been just as bad as Rosamond if she had been in her place."
The young man laughed. "Your sister is very satirical, isn"t she?"
"I don"t know," said Irene, still intent upon the convolutions of the shaving. "She keeps us laughing. Papa thinks there"s n.o.body that can talk like her." She gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took the parasol up across her lap. The unworldliness of the Lapham girls did not extend to their dress; Irene"s costume was very stylish, and she governed her head and shoulders stylishly. "We are going to have the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," she said abruptly.
"Yes?" returned Corey. "I should think that would be charming."
"We expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants to build the shelves in."
The fact seemed to be referred to Corey for his comment.
"It seems to me that would be the best way. They"ll look like part of the room then. You can make them low, and hang your pictures above them."
"Yes, that"s what he said." The girl looked out of the window in adding, "I presume with nice bindings it will look very well."
"Oh, nothing furnishes a room like books."
"No. There will have to be a good many of them."
"That depends upon the size of your room and the number of your shelves."
"Oh, of course! I presume," said Irene, thoughtfully, "we shall have to have Gibbon."
"If you want to read him," said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an imaginable joke.
"We had a great deal about him at school. I believe we had one of his books. Mine"s lost, but Pen will remember."
The young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, "You"ll want Greene, of course, and Motley, and Parkman."
"Yes. What kind of writers are they?"
"They"re historians too."
"Oh yes; I remember now. That"s what Gibbon was. Is it Gibbon or Gibbons?"
The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy.
"Gibbon, I think."
"There used to be so many of them," said Irene gaily. "I used to get them mixed up with each other, and I couldn"t tell them from the poets.
Should you want to have poetry?"
"Yes; I suppose some edition of the English poets."
"We don"t any of us like poetry. Do you like it?"
"I"m afraid I don"t very much," Corey owned. "But, of course, there was a time when Tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now."
"We had something about him at school too. I think I remember the name. I think we ought to have ALL the American poets."
"Well, not all. Five or six of the best: you want Longfellow and Bryant and Whittier and Holmes and Emerson and Lowell."
The girl listened attentively, as if making mental note of the names.
"And Shakespeare," she added. "Don"t you like Shakespeare"s plays?"
"Oh yes, very much."
"I used to be perfectly crazy about his plays. Don"t you think "Hamlet" is splendid? We had ever so much about Shakespeare. Weren"t you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays of his there were? I always thought there was nothing but "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" and "Macbeth" and "Richard III." and "King Lear," and that one that Robeson and Crane have--oh yes! "Comedy of Errors.""
"Those are the ones they usually play," said Corey.
"I presume we shall have to have Scott"s works," said Irene, returning to the question of books.
"Oh yes."
"One of the girls used to think he was GREAT. She was always talking about Scott." Irene made a pretty little amiably contemptuous mouth.
"He isn"t American, though?" she suggested.
"No," said Corey; "he"s Scotch, I believe."
Irene pa.s.sed her glove over her forehead. "I always get him mixed up with Cooper. Well, papa has got to get them. If we have a library, we have got to have books in it. Pen says it"s perfectly ridiculous having one. But papa thinks whatever the architect says is right. He fought him hard enough at first. I don"t see how any one can keep the poets and the historians and novelists separate in their mind. Of course papa will buy them if we say so. But I don"t see how I"m ever going to tell him which ones." The joyous light faded out of her face and left it pensive.
"Why, if you like," said the young man, taking out his pencil, "I"ll put down the names we"ve been talking about."
He clapped himself on his breast pockets to detect some lurking sc.r.a.p of paper.
"Will you?" she cried delightedly. "Here! take one of my cards," and she pulled out her card-case. "The carpenter writes on a three-cornered block and puts it into his pocket, and it"s so uncomfortable he can"t help remembering it. Pen says she"s going to adopt the three-cornered-block plan with papa."
"Thank you," said Corey. "I believe I"ll use your card." He crossed over to her, and after a moment sat down on the trestle beside her.
She looked over the card as he wrote. "Those are the ones we mentioned, but perhaps I"d better add a few others."
"Oh, thank you," she said, when he had written the card full on both sides. "He has got to get them in the nicest binding, too. I shall tell him about their helping to furnish the room, and then he can"t object." She remained with the card, looking at it rather wistfully.
Perhaps Corey divined her trouble of mind. "If he will take that to any bookseller, and tell him what bindings he wants, he will fill the order for him."
"Oh, thank you very much," she said, and put the card back into her card-case with great apparent relief. Then she turned her lovely face toward the young man, beaming with the triumph a woman feels in any bit of successful manoeuvring, and began to talk with recovered gaiety of other things, as if, having got rid of a matter annoying out of all proportion to its importance, she was now going to indemnify herself.
Corey did not return to his own trestle. She found another shaving within reach of her parasol, and began poking that with it, and trying to follow it through its folds. Corey watched her a while.