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 occupying her idle time, but of decoying her