He did not ply me with questions. He may not have suspected that the shock had numbed my ideas and stiffened my tongue. If he had, he could not have borne himself more tactfully. He was a man who had seen the world and hobnobbed with really distinguished live authors. It would not have been possible for him to enter fully into what this day was to me. When I thought of Bruce and the Nile, it was because I did not comprehend that the very magnitude of the crisis was what deprived me of the power of appreciating what had happened. No! I am not inclined to ridicule the unsophisticated girl whose emotions were too mighty for speech that May noon, and to minimize what excited them. Nothing that wealth or fame could ever offer me in years to come could stir the depths of heart and mind as they were upheaved in that supreme hour. The parcel of books had been opened and the contents examined, by the time I got home. I stole past the open door of my mother’s chamber, where she and Aunt Rice, who was visiting us, and Mea were chatting vivaciously, and betook myself to my room. When my sister looked me up at dinner-time I told her to excuse me from coming down. “The heat had made me giddy and headachy.” She bade me “lie still. She would send me a cup of tea.” “I’ll leave you this for company,” she cooed, laying the book tenderly on my pillow. “_We_ think it beautiful.” With that she went out softly, shutting me in with my “beautiful” first-born. Mea always had her wits within easy call. The sixth sense was born within her. I saw of the travail of my soul and was satisfied; was repaid a thousandfold for months of toil and years of waiting, when my father read my book. He did not go down-town again that day, after coming home to dinner. My mother told me, with a happy break in her laugh, how he had hardly touched the food on his plate. Aunt Rice’s pleasant prattle saved the situation from awkwardness when he lapsed into a brown study and talked less than he ate. When dessert was brought in, he excused himself and disappeared from general view for the rest of the afternoon. The door of “the chamber” to which he withdrew was fast shut. Nobody disturbed him until it was too dark to read by daylight. My mother took in a lighted lamp and set it on the table by him. “He didn’t see or hear me!” was her report. “He is a quarter through the book already, and he doesn’t skip a word.” He spent just fifteen minutes at the supper-table. It was two o’clock in the morning before he reached the last page. After prayers next morning he put his arm about me and held me fast for a moment. Then he kissed me very gravely. “I was right about that book, daughter!” That was all! but it was, to my speechless self, as if the morning stars had sung together for joy.