studies she liked. During that winter following her
husband's death Mrs. Brandeis had a way of playing solitaire
after supper; one of the simpler forms of the game. It
seemed to help her to think out the day's problems, and to
soothe her at the same time. She would turn down the front
of the writing desk, and draw up the piano stool.

All through that winter Fanny seemed to remember reading to
the slap-slap of cards, and the whir of their shuffling. In
after years she was never able to pick up a volume of
Dickens without having her mind hark back to those long,
quiet evenings. She read a great deal of Dickens at that
time. She had a fine contempt for his sentiment, and his
great ladies bored her. She did not know that this was
because they were badly drawn. The humor she loved, and she
read and reread the passages dealing with Samuel Weller, and
Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and Fanny Squeers. It was
rather trying to read Dickens before supper, she had
discovered. Pickwick Papers was fatal, she had found. It
sent one to the pantry in a sort of trance, to ransack for
food--cookies, apples, cold meat, anything. But whatever
one found, it always fell short of the succulent sounding
beefsteak pies, and saddles of mutton, and hot pineapple
toddy of the printed page.

To-night Mrs. Brandeis, coming in from the kitchen after a
conference with Mattie, found her daughter in conversational
mood, though book in hand.

"Mother, did you ever read this?" She held up "The Ladies'