expectantly to turn it over. But something stirred reprovingly in
her heart. It seemed as if she were listening to a conversation
not meant for her. So she kept her finger on the leaf, but did not
turn it.

"No," she said, "I will not read it. It is not meant for me."
Then, after a pause, "At least I will only read this page which is
open, and then look at the beginning to see whose it is; for, you
know, I may need to send it back to him." The back she had seen
vanish round the Far Away Turn demanded the masculine pronoun.

She lifted the book and read:

"Alas!" (so ran the writing, fluent and clear, small as printer's
type, Ralph Peden's beautiful Hellenic script), "alas, that the
good qualities of the housewives of Solomon's days are out of date
and forgotten in these degenerate times! Women, especially the
younger of them, are become gadabouts, chatterers in the public
ways, idle, adorners of their vain selves, pamperers of their
frail tabernacles--"

Winsome threw down the book and almost trod upon it as upon a
snake.

"'Tis some city fop," she said, stamping her foot, "who is tired
of the idle town dames. I wonder if he has ever seen the sun rise
or done a day's work in his life? If only I had the wretch! But I
will read no more!"

In token of the sincerity of the last assertion, she picked up the