He closed the book with a snap and a sigh and descended. Her
anxious look recalled his attention,

"Did I not hear Harriet harrowing you up again with her troubles?"
he asked. "You poor, kind soul that try to bear everybody's!"

"Never mind about what I bear! What can you bear for dinner?"

"It is an outrage, Anna! What right has she to make herself
happier by making you miserable, lengthening her life by shortening
yours? For these worries always clip the thread of life at the
end: that is where all the small debts are collected as one."

"Now you must not be down on Harriet! It makes her happier; and as
to the end of my life, I shall be there to attend to that."

"Suppose I moved away with you to some other college entirely out
of her reach?"

"I shall not suppose it because you will never do it. If you did,
Harriet would simply find somebody else to confide in; she _must_
tell _everything_ to _somebody_. But if she told any one else, a
good many of these stories would be all over town. She tells me
and they get no further."

"What right have you to listen to scandal in order to suppress it?"

"I don't even listen always: I merely stop the stream at its
source."

"I object to your offering your mind as the banks to such a stream.
Still I'm glad that I live near the banks," and he kissed his hand
to her.

"When one woman tells another anything and the other woman does not
tell, remember it is not scandal--it is confidence."

"Then there is no such thing as confidence," he replied, laughing.

He turned toward his shelves.

"Now do rest," she pleaded, "you look worn out."

She had a secret notion that books instead of putting life into
people took it out of them. At best they performed the function of
grindstones: they made you sharper, but they made you thinner--gave
you more edge and left you less substance.

"I wish every one of those books had a lock and I had the bunch of
keys."

"Each has a lock and key; but the key cannot be put into your
pocket, Anna, my dear; it is the unlocking mind. And you are not
to speak of books as a collection of locks and keys; they make up
the living tree of knowledge, though of course there is very little
of the tree in this particular bookcase."

"I don't see any of it," she remarked with wholesome literalness.

"Well, here at the bottom are lexicons--think of them as roots and
soil. Above them lie maps and atlases: consider them the surface.
The