Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity. He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them over gravely. The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had a great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling it. He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of books. When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss Alicia, she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to her in the evenings--“reading improving things like history and the poets.” “Let's take a hack at it some night,” he said pleasantly. The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much “improving things” and poetry would help a man in doing business. The first evening they began with Gray's “Elegy,” and Miss Alicia felt that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that he did not read it very well. But she felt sure he would improve. Personally she was touchingly happy. The sweetly domestic picture of the situation, she sitting by the fire with her knitting and he reading aloud, moved and delighted her. The next evening she suggested Tennyson's “Maud.” He was not as much stirred by it as she had hoped. He took a somewhat humorous view of it. “He had it pretty bad, hadn't he?”' he said of the desperate lover. “Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing 'Come into the Garden, Maud'!” she sighed. “A kind friend once took me to hear him, and I have never, never forgotten it.” But Mr. Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of impassioned tenors. On still another evening they tried Shakspere. Miss Alicia felt that a foundation of Shakspere would be “improving” indeed. They began with “Hamlet.” He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but he made his way with determination until he reached a point where he suddenly grew quite red and stopped. “Say, have you read this?” he inquired after his hesitation. “The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady's education,” she answered; “but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar.” “A young lady's education?” he repeated. “Gee whizz!” he added softly after a pause. He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down. “Say,” he suggested, with an evasive air, “let's go over that 'Maud' one again. It's--well, it's easier to read aloud.” The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself flush and drop a stitch in her knitting. How dreadful of her not to have thought of that! “The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects. Even history acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth herself used profane language.” She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she picked up her stitch again.