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has penned in our time, they feel very lonely up there in a stately row. I think their eye is on you the moment you enter the rcom, and so you are drawn to look at them, and you take a volume down with the impulse that induces one to unchain the dog. And the result is not dissimilar, for in another moment you two are at play. Is there any other modern writer who gets round you in this way? Well, he had given my mother the look which in the ball-room means, "Ask me for this waltz," and she ettled to do it, but felt that her more dutiful course was to sit out the dance with this other less entertaining partner.

They whispered so low that I could catch only one remark. It came from James, and seems to show the tenor of their whisperings, for his words were, "Easily enough, if you slip me beneath your shawl."

That is what she did, and furthermore she left the room guiltily, muttering something about redding up the drawers. I suppose I smiled wanly to myself, or conscience must have been nibbling at my mother, for in less than five minutes she was back, carrying her accomplice openly, and she thrust him with positive viciousness into the place where my Stevenson had lost a tooth (as the writer whom he most resembled would have said). And then like a good mother she took up one of her son's books and read it most determinedly. It had become a touching incident to me, and I remember how we there and then agreed

upon a compromise: she was to read the enticing thing just to convince herself of its inferiority.

The Master of Ballantrae is not the best. Conceive the glory, which was my mother's, of knowing from a trustworthy source that there are at least three better awaiting you on the same shelf. She did not know Alan Breck yet, and he was as anxious to step down as Mr. Bally himself. John Silver was there, getting into his leg, so that she should not have to wait a moment, and roaring, "I'll lay to that!" when she told me consolingly that she could not thole pirate stories. Not to know these gentlemen, what is it like? It is like never having been in love. But they are in the house! That is like knowing that you will fall in love to-morrow morning. With one word, by drawing one mournful face, I could have got my mother to abjure the jam-shelf-nay, I might have managed it by merely saying that she had enjoyed The Master of Ballantrae. For you must remember that she only read to persuade herself (and me) of its unworthiness, and that the reason she wanted to read the others was to get further proof.

All this she made plain to me, eying me a little anxiously the while, and of course I accepted the explanation. How enamored she was of Treasure Island and how faithful she tried to be to me all the time she was reading it! I had to put my hands over her eyes to let her know that I had entered the room, and even then she

might try to read between my fingers, coming to herself presently, however, to say, "It's a haver of a book."

"Those pirate stories are so uninteresting," I would reply without fear, for she was too engrossed to see through me. "Do you think you will finish this one?"

"I may as well go on with it since I have begun it," my mother says, so slyly that my sister and I shake our heads. at each other to imply, "Was there ever such a woman!" "There are none of those one-legged scoundrels in my books," I say.

"Better without them," she replies promptly.

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"I wonder, mother, what it is about the man that so infatuates the public?"

"He takes no hold of me," she insists. "I would a hantle rather read your books."

I offer obligingly to bring one of them to her, and now she looks at me suspiciously. "You surely believe I like yours best," she says with instant anxiety, and I soothe her by assurances, and retire advising her to read on, just to see if she can find out how he misleads the public. "Oh, I may take a look at it again by and by," she says indifferently, but nevertheless the probability is that as the door shuts the book opens, as if by some mechanical contrivance.

I remember how she read Treasure Island, holding it close to the ribs of the fire (because she could not spare a moment to rise and light the gas), and how when bed

time came, and we coaxed, remonstrated, scolded, she said quite fiercely, clinging to the book, "I dinna lay my head on a pillow this night till I see how that laddie got out of the barrel."

After this, I think, he was as bewitching as the laddie in the barrel to her-Was he not always a laddie in the barrel himself, climbing in for apples while we all stood around, like gamin, looking for a bite? He was the spirit of boyhood tugging at the skirts of this old world of ours and compelling it to come back and play.

And I suppose my mother felt this, as so many have felt it like others she was a little scared at first to find herself skipping again, with this masterful child at the rope, but soon she gave him her hand and set off with him for the meadow, not an apology between the two of them for the author left behind.

But never to the end did she admit (in words) that he had a way with him which was beyond her son. "Silk and sacking, that is what we are," she was informed, to which she would reply obstinately, "Well, then, I prefer sacking."

"But if he had been your son?"

"But he is not."

"You wish he were?"

"I dinna deny but what I could have found room for him."

From "Margaret Ogilvy." Abridged.

THE PRIMROSE WAY

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Somewhere on the sunny hill,
Or along the winding stream,
Through the willows, flits a dream;
Flits, but shows a smiling face,
Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
None can choose to stay at home.
All must follow, all must roam.

This is unborn beauty: she
Now in air floats high and free,
Takes the sun and breaks the blue;-
Late with stooping pinion flew,
Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
Her wing in silver streams, and set
Shining foot on temple roof:
Now again she flies aloof,

Coasting mountain clouds and kissed

By the evening's amethyst.
Where hath fleeting beauty led?
To the doorway of the dead.
Life is over, life was gay:

We have come the primrose way.

Abridged.

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