while she was looking out at the window). My behaviour may seem
small, but I gave her a last chance, for I said that some people
found it a book there was no putting down until they reached the
last page.

'I'm no that kind,' replied my mother.

Nevertheless our old game with the haver of a thing, as she called
it, was continued, with this difference, that it was now she who
carried the book covertly upstairs, and I who replaced it on the
shelf, and several times we caught each other in the act, but not a
word said either of us; we were grown self-conscious. Much of the
play no doubt I forget, but one incident I remember clearly. She
had come down to sit beside me while I wrote, and sometimes, when I
looked up, her eye was not on me, but on the shelf where 'The
Master of Ballantrae' stood inviting her. Mr. Stevenson's books
are not for the shelf, they are for the hand; even when you lay
them down, let it be on the table for the next comer. Being the
most sociable that man has penned in our time, they feel very
lonely up there in a stately row. I think their eye is on you the
moment you enter the room, and so you are drawn to look at them,
and you take a volume down with the impulse that induces one to
unchain the dog. And the result is not dissimilar, for in another
moment you two are at play. Is there any other modern writer who
gets round you in this way? Well, he had given my mother the look
which in the ball-room means, 'Ask me for this waltz,' and she
ettled to do it, but felt that her more dutiful course was to sit
out the dance with this other less entertaining partner. I wrote
on doggedly, but could hear the whispering.