or Shelley even--do you like?"

"Well, when I was a boy, I read Chaucer, and liked him very much; and
the other day when I was looking over Leigh Hunt's essays, I found a
number of them about Chaucer with long, well-chosen extracts; and I
don't know when I've found greater pleasure in poetry. If I must have a
favorite among the old poets, I will take Chaucer. Of course, Spenser is
rather more modern."

"Yes, but I can't bear his agnosticism, can you? And I hate metaphysics,
anyway."

The grandfather looked bewildered; then he said, "Now, I'm afraid we are
getting too much Spenser."

The girl went off at a tangent. "Don't you just _love_ Mr. Gillette in
'Sherlock Holmes'? There's a play I should think you would like to read!
They say there's a novel been made out of it. I wish I could get hold of
it for you. Well, go on, grandfather!"

"No, my dear, it's for you to go on. But don't you think you've
catechised me sufficiently about my reading? You must find it very
old-fashioned."

"No, not at all. I like old things myself. The girls are always laughing
at me because I read George Eliot, and Dickens, and Thackeray, and
Charles Reade, and Wilkie Collins, and those back numbers. But I should
say, if I said anything, that you were rather deficient in fiction,
grandfather. You seem to have read everything but novels."

"Is that so? I was afraid I had read nothing but novels. I----"

"Tell me what novels you have read," she broke in upon him
imperatively. "The ones you consider the greatest."

The grandfather had to think. "It is rather a long list--so long that
I'm ashamed of it. Perhaps I'd better mention only the very greatest,
like _Don Quixote_, and _Gil Blas_, and _Wilhelm Meister_, and _The
Vicar of Wakefield_, and _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Emma_, and _Pride and
Prejudice_, and _The Bride of Lammermoor_, and _I Promessi Sposi_, and
_Belinda_, and _Frankenstein_, and _Chartreuse de Parme_, and _Cesar
Birotteau_, and _The Last Days of Pompeii_, and _David Copperfield_, and
_Pendennis_, and _The Scarlet Letter_, and _Blithedale Romance_, and
_The Cloister and the Hearth_, and _Middlemarch_, and _Smoke_, and
_Fathers and Sons_, and _A Nest of Nobles_, and _War and Peace_, and
_Anna Karenina_, and _Resurrection_, and _Dona Perfecta_, and _Marta y
Maria_, and _I Malavoglia_, and _The Return of the Native_, and
_L'Assomoir_, and _Madame Bovary_, and _The Awkward Age_, and _The
Grandissimes_--and most of the other boo