nd called cuckoo and fetched you out sailing?"

"Rowing, you mean. Something learned! It was the 'History of Sir Peter
with the Silver Key and the Beautiful Magelone.'"

"Who is that by?"

"By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. 'Vigoleis
with the Golden Wheel' isn't by anybody either, neither is 'Bryde, the
Hunter.'"

"I have never heard of those titles before."

"Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no, that
is quite likely, they aren't fine books at all; they are the sort you
buy from old women at fairs."

"That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?"

"Always? I don't read many books in the course of a year, and the kind I
really like the best are those that have Indians in them."

"But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?"

"Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at
home, and Miss Holm--my mother's companion--read them aloud after lunch
and in the evenings; but I can't say that I cared for them; I don't like
verse."

"Don't like verse? You said had, isn't your mother living any more?"

"No, neither is my father."

He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation
halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little
sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl
broke the silence:

"Do you like paintings?"

"Altar-pieces? Oh, I don't know."

"Yes, or other pictures, landscapes for instance?"

"Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well."

"You are laughing at me?"

"I? Oh yes, one of us is doing that"

"But aren't you a student?"

"Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing."

"But you must be something. You must do something?"

"But why?"

"Why, because--everybody does something!"

"Are you doing something?"

"Oh well, but you are not a lady."

"No, heaven be praised."

"Thank you."

He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the
face and asked:

"What do you mean by that?--No, don't be angry with me; I will tell you
something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it. You
think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father was a
fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I daresay
he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because mother and
I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the things they
teach