A fresh cigarette was lighted. "Like to read? Why didn't you tell me? Got a lot of books I don't know what to do with. Will send them down if you want them--" "Want them?" Mrs. McDougal sat upright, hands up also. "It's the sin of my life, readin' is. But it's saved me from losin' my mind. When a person gets up at five o-clock three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, except Sundays, when it's six; cooks, washes dishes, cleans, sews, cooks, washes dishes, sews, cooks, washes dishes, and in between times scrambles round doin' dozens of odd jobs that don't count, life ain't true poetry, and if 'twarn't for risin' out the world I live in and gettin' into a book one at night I'd gone crazy long before this. Makes my mouth water just to think of havin' some books of my own. All I read is borrowed, and I have to hide 'em under the mattress to keep the children from gettin' 'em dirty. I thank you hearty, Mr. John; I certainly do." John Maxwell took a note-book and pencil out of his pocket. "I've a good forgettery and if I don't put that down you'd have to write, perhaps. How about Mr. McDougal? What kind does he like?" Mrs. McDougal's jolly laugh reached to the mulberry-tree and the children looked up. "Books! McDougal!" Her hands came down on her knees with a resounding smack. "If McDougal has read a book since I've been married to him he's done it in the dark. Books ain't his line. He's a good man, McDougal is, but you couldn't call him lit'rary. You see"--she settled herself back in her chair and again folded her arms-- "he hasn't got what you might say was imaginations. He can't understand why some days I'd so much rather use the axe on the kitchen stove than in the wood-house, or why the sight of a dish-pan makes me sick in my stomach. As for my chickens--calling hens and roosters by names of big people is tommy-rot to him, and he don't any more know my longin's for a look at high life and for people who use elegant language and paint pictures and play the pianer than I understand how he can live in a teacup and not smash it. He's one of the kind what believes you ought to stay where you're put, but in my opinion them what believes that, as a rule, ain't got sense or hustle enough to get out. I'm not sayin' McDougal is lazy or lackin', but his own ma couldn't think he had a brain that was lively. He ain't got it. Did you ever see a mule goin' round a cider mill? That's McDougal. In the daytime he's as given to silence as I am to talk, but couldn't anybody beat him snorin'. Sometimes I think the roof has gone." John Maxwell coughed. The smoke from the cigarette had gone the wrong way and his eyes were watery.