e imitation Eastern antimacassars, the shocking fate, in the way of
nailed and glued pictorial ornamentation, that had overtaken the back of
the cottage piano--indeed, all the various objects of luxury and _vertu_
with which Mrs. Alwynn had surrounded herself, seemed to recall to Ruth,
as the apparatus of the sick-room recalls the illness to the patient,
the stupor into which she had fallen in their company. With her eyes
fixed upon the new brass pig (that was at heart a pen-wiper) which Mrs.
Alwynn had pointed out as a gift of Mabel Thursby, who always brought
her back some little "tasty thing from London"--with her eyes on the
brass pig, Ruth resolved that, come what would, she would not allow
herself to sink into such a state of mental paralysis again.

To read a book of any description was out of the question in the society
of Mrs. Alwynn. But Ruth, with the connivance of Mr. Alwynn, devised a
means of eluding her aunt. At certain hours of the day she was lost
regularly, and not to be found. It was summer, and the world, or at
least the neighborhood of Slumberleigh Rectory, which was the same
thing, was all before her where to choose. In after-years she used to
say that some books had always remained associated with certain places
in her mind. With Emerson she learned to associate the scent of hay, the
desultory remarks of hens, and the sudden choruses of ducks. Carlyle's
"Sartor Resartus," which she read for the first time this year, always
recalled to her afterwards the leathern odor of the box-room, with an
occasional _soupcon_ of damp flapping linen in the orchard, which spot
was not visible from the rectory windows.

Gradually Mrs. Alwynn became aware of the fact that Ruth was never to be
seen with a book in her hand, and she expressed fears that the latter
was not keeping up her reading.

"And if you don't like to read to yourself, my dear, you can read to me
while I work. German, now. I like the sound of German very well. It
brings back the time when your Uncle John and I went up the Rhine on our
honey-moon. And then, for English reading there's a very nice book Uncle
John has somewhere on natural history, called 'Animals of a Quiet Life,'
by a Mr. Hare, too--so comical, I always think. It's good for you to be
reading something. It is what your poor dear granny would have wished if
she had been alive. Only it must not be poetry, Ruth, not poetry."

Mrs. Alwynn did not approve of poetry. She was wont to say