ssly, "but I read
them before I left London."

"And the others won't even do for a dull day in the country?" I went on.

"They might do for some people," she answered, "but not for me. I'm
rather peculiar, perhaps, in my tastes. I'm sick to death of novels with
an earnest purpose. I'm sick to death of outbursts of eloquence, and
large-minded philanthropy, and graphic descriptions, and unsparing
anatomy of the human heart, and all that sort of thing. Good gracious
me! isn't it the original intention or purpose, or whatever you call it,
of a work of fiction, to set out distinctly by telling a story? And
how many of these books, I should like to know, do that? Why, so far as
telling a story is concerned, the greater part of them might as well
be sermons as novels. Oh, dear me! what I want is something that seizes
hold of my interest, and makes me forget when it is time to dress
for dinner--something that keeps me reading, reading, reading, in a
breathless state to find out the end. You know what I mean--at least you
ought. Why, there was that little chance story you told me yesterday
in the garden--don't you remember?--about your strange client, whom you
never saw again: I declare it was much more interesting than half these
novels, _because_ it was a story. Tell me another about your young days,
when you were seeing the world, and meeting with all sorts of remarkable
people. Or, no--don't tell it now--keep it till the evening, when we all
want something to stir us up. You old people might amuse us young ones
out of your own resources oftener than you do. It was very kind of you
to get me these books; but, with all respect to them, I would rather
have the rummaging of your memory than the rummaging of this box. What's
the matter? Are you afraid I have found out the window in your bosom
already?"

I had half risen from my chair at her last words, and I felt that my
face must have flushed at the same moment. She had started an idea in my
mind--the very idea of which I had been in search when I was pondering
over the best means of amusing her in the long autumn evenings.

I parried her questions by the best excuses I could offer; changed
the conversation for the next five minutes, and then, making a sudden
remembrance of business my apology for leaving her, hastily withdrew to
devote myself to the new idea in the solitude of my own room.

A little quiet thinking convinced me that I had discovered a means not
only of occu