The Major was sitting in his easy-chair, looking at the pictures in an old book. He closed the volume and hastily drew off his spectacles as his daughter came in. "It has been a beautiful afternoon," he remarked, speaking promptly and decidedly. "Have you been out? or were you at home with a book--in your old way? What do you find to read nowadays? I find almost nothing." And he folded his arms with a critical air. "I find little that can be compared with the old English authors, the ones you like," answered his daughter. "The old books are better than the new." "So they are, so they are," replied the Major, with satisfaction. "I have often made the remark myself." "Now that I am at home again," continued Sara, "I want to look over all those old books I used to have before I went to Longfields--those that were called mine. I hope we have them still?" "Yes," said Scar, in his deliberate little voice, "we have. I read them now. And the long words I look out in the dictionary." "It is a very good exercise for him. I suggested it," said the Major. "I want to see all their old pictures again," pursued Sara. "I know I shall care a great deal about them; they will be like dear old friends." "Very natural; I quite understand the feeling," said the Major, encouragingly. "And as Scar reads the books, perhaps you will find some of them lying about this very room. Let me see--didn't I have one just now? Yes, here it is; what was it?" And taking up the volume he had laid down a moment before, he opened it, and read, or repeated with the air of reading (for his spectacles were off), "'The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and his Servant-man Friday. Defoe. London.'" Sara came to his side and looked at the title-page. "Yes, that is my dear old book. I loved it better than any other, excepting, perhaps, 'Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth.' I wonder if the old pictures are all there?" "I think they are," said the Major, turning the leaves. They looked at one or two together, recalling reminiscences of the days when she used to talk about them as a child. "You always insisted that this print of Friday's foot was not of the right shape, and once you even went out in the garden, took off your shoe and stocking, and made a print in a flower-bed to show me," said the Major, laughing. "Let us look them all over after tea, and 'Good Queen Bertha' too," said Sara. "For Scar and I have come to take you out to tea, father; the dining-room is so dull without you. Besides, I want you to give me some peach preserves, and then say, 'No, Sara, not again,' when I ask for more; and then, after a few minutes, put a large table-spoonful on my plate with your head turned away, while talking to some one else, as though unconscious of what you were doing." Scar laughed over this anecdote, and so did Scar's father. "But perhaps we shall have no peach preserve," he said, rising.