way, "Does
it not seem to you a pity to let these long winter evenings run to
waste?"

"Yes, dear," she replied; "I think you ought to do something."

"And you, too. Is it not so, darling?"

"There's generally some sewing, or the accounts."

"Yes; but these things do not exercise the mind."

"Accounts do."

"Not in the way I mean." I had now reached my point. "How would it be
if I were to read aloud to you? I don't think you have ever heard me
read aloud. You are fond of the theatre, and we cannot often afford to
go. This would make up for it. There are many men who would tell you
that they would sooner have a play read aloud to them than see it acted
in the finest theatre in the world."

"Would they? Well--perhaps--if I were only sewing it wouldn't interrupt
me much."

I said, "That is not very graciously put, Eliza. There is a certain art
in reading aloud. Some have it, and some have not. I do not know if I
have ever told you, but when I was a boy of twelve I won a prize for
recitation, though several older boys were competing against me."

She said that I had told her before several times.

I continued: "And I suppose that I have developed since then. A man in
our office once told me that he thought I should have done well on the
stage. I don't know whether I ever mentioned it."

She said that I had mentioned it once or twice.

"I should have thought that you would have been glad of a little
pleasure--innocent, profitable, and entertaining. However, if you think
I am not capable of----"

"What do you want to read?"

"What would you like me to read?"

"Miss Sakers lent me this." She handed me a paper-covered volume,
entitled, "The Murglow Mystery; or, The Stain on the Staircase."

"Trash like this is not literature," I said. However, to please her, I
glanced at the first page. Half an hour later I said that I should be
very sorry to read a book of that stamp out loud.

"Then why do you go on reading it to yourself?"

"Strictly speaking, I am not reading it. I am glancing at it."

When Eliza got up to go to bed, an hour afterward, she asked me if I
was still glancing. I kept my temper.

"Try not to be so infernally unreasonable," I said. "If Miss Sakers
lends us a book, it is discourteous not to look at it."

On the following night Eliza said that she hoped I was not going to sit
up until three in the morning, wasting the gas and ruining my health,
over a book that I myself had said--

"And