t.

Amaryllis did so, and said that the coins and medals in it were very
interesting, as they really were. The smoke caught her in the throat,
and seemed to stop the air as she breathed from reaching her chest. So
much accustomed to the open air, she felt stifled.

Then he asked her to read to him aloud, that he might hear how she
enunciated her words. The book he gave her was an early copy of Addison,
the page a pale yellow, the type old-fount, the edges rough, but where
in a trim modern volume will you find language like his and ideas set
forth with such transparent lucidity? How easy to write like that!--so
simple, merely a letter to an intimate friend; but try!

Trim modern volumes are so very hard to read, especially those that come
to us from New York, thick volumes of several hundred pages, printed on
the thinnest paper in hard, unpleasant type. You cannot read them; you
_work_ through them.

The French have retained a little of the old style of book in their
paper bound franc novels, the rough paper, thick black type, rough edges
are pleasant to touch and look at--they feel as if they were done by
hand, not turned out hurriedly smooth and trim by machinery.

Docile to the last degree with him, Amaryllis tried her utmost to read
well, and she succeeded, so far as the choking smoke would let her. By
grunting between his continuous fits of coughing the old man signified
his approval.

Amaryllis would have been respectful to any of the aged, but she had a
motive here; she wanted to please him for her father's sake. For many
years there had been an increasing estrangement between the younger and
the elder Iden; an estrangement which no one could have explained, for
it could hardly be due to money matters if Grandfather Iden was really
so rich. The son was his father's tenant--the farm belonged to
Grandfather Iden--and perhaps the rent was not paid regularly. Still
that could not have much mattered--a mere trifle to a man of old Iden's
wealth. There was something behind, no one knew what; possibly they
scarcely knew themselves, for it is a fact that people frequently fall
into a quarrel without remembering the beginning.

Amaryllis was very anxious to please the old man for her father's sake;
her dear father, whom she loved so much. Tradesmen were for ever
worrying him for petty sums of money; it made her furious with
indignation to see and hear it.

So she read her very best, and swallowed the choking smoke