"Reading! you are always reading," said the woman, as she put a smoking dish on the table, and speaking for the first time. "It's books, books, from morn to night, and your father encourages you. The books will make thee old before thy time, child, and put no pence in thy father's pocket." "Poor father!" she murmured, and leaning forward, put her arms round his neck. "I wish I could find in the poor, abused books the way to make him rich." Gideon had put up his rough hand to caress the white one nestling against his face, but he let his hand drop again and looked at her with a slight cloud on his brow. "Rich! who wants to be rich? The word is on your lips full oft of late, Una. Do _you_ want to be rich?" "Sometimes," she answered. "As much for your sake as mine. I should like to be rich enough for you to rest, and"--looking round the plainly furnished but comfortable room--"and a better house and clothes." "I am not weary," he said, his eyes fixed on her with a thoughtful air of concealed scrutiny. "The cot is good enough for me, and the purple and fine linen I want none of. So much for me; now for yourself, Una?" "For myself?" she said. "Well, sometimes I think, when I have been reading some of the books, that I should like to be rich and see the world." "It must be such a wonderful place! Not so wonderful as I think it, perhaps, and that's just because I have never seen anything of it. Is it not strange that for all these years I have never been outside Warden?" "Strange?" he echoed, reluctantly. "Yes; are other girls so shut in and kept from seeing the world that one reads so pleasantly of?" "Not all. It would be well for most of them if they were. It has been well for you. You have not been unhappy, Una?" "Unhappy! No! How could one be unhappy in Warden? Why, it's a world in itself, and full of friends. Every living thing in it seems a friend, and an old friend, too. How long have we lived in Warden, father?" "Eighteen years." "And I am twenty-one. Mother told me yesterday. Where did we live before we came to Warden?" "Don't worry your father, Una," said Mrs. Rolfe, who had been listening and looking from one to the other with ill-concealed anxiety; "he is too weary to talk." "Forgive me, father. It was thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that you have had a hard day, while I have been idling in the wood, and over my books; it was stupid of me to trouble you. Won't you sit down again and--and I will promise not to talk." "Say no more, Una. It grieves me to think that you might not be content, that you were not happy; if you knew as much of the world that raves and writhes outside as I do, you would be all too thankful that you are out of the monster's reach, and that all you know of it is from your books, which--Heaven forgive them--lie all too often! See now, here is something I found in Arkdale;" and as he spoke he drew from the capacious pocket of his velveteen jacket a small volume.