"By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. 'Vigoleis
with the Golden Wheel' isn't by anybody either, neither is 'Bryde,
the Hunter.'"

"I have never heard of those titles before."

"Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no,
that is quite likely, they aren't fine books at all; they are the sort
you buy from old women at fairs."

"That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?"

"Always? I don't read many books in the course of a year, and the kind
I really like the best are those that have Indians in them."

"But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?"

"Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at
home, and Miss Holm--my mother's companion--read them aloud after
lunch and in the evenings; but I can't say that I cared for them; I
don't like verse."

"Don't like verse? You said had, isn't your mother living any more?"

"No, neither is my father."

He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation
halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little
sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl