She
wrung her hands, but indignation came to her with my explanation,
which was that while R. L. S. was at it we others were only
'prentices cutting our fingers on his tools. 'I could never thole
his books,' said my mother immediately, and indeed vindictively.
'You have not read any of them,' I reminded her.
'And never will,' said she with spirit.
And I have no doubt that she called him a dark character that very
day. For weeks too, if not for months, she adhered to her
determination not to read him, though I, having come to my senses
and seen that there is a place for the 'prentice, was taking a
pleasure, almost malicious, in putting 'The Master of Ballantrae'
in her way. I would place it on her table so that it said good-
morning to her when she rose. She would frown, and carrying it
downstairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace it on its book-
shelf. I would wrap it up in the cover she had made for the latest
Carlyle: she would skin it contemptuously and again bring it down.
I would hide her spectacles in it, and lay it on top of the
clothes-basket and prop it up invitingly open against her tea-pot.
And at last I got her, though I forget by which of many
contrivances. What I recall vividly is a key-hole view, to which
another member of the family invited me. Then I saw my mother
wrapped up in 'The Master of Ballantrae' and muttering the music to
herself, nodding her head in approval, and taking a stealthy glance
at the foot of each page before she began at the top.
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