At Collingham Lodge, she had caught glimpses of books, papers, and magazines. Even in the bird cage they were lying on the table and chairs. The Folletts hardly ever read a book. The only work of the kind she could remember the family ever to have bought was one called _Ancient Rome Restored_, which her mother had subscribed for in monthly parts when an agent brought a sample to the house. It was at a time when Lizzie was afraid that her children—they were children still—would grow up without cultivation. _Ancient Rome Restored_, being abundantly illustrated, called out in the young Folletts the almost extinct Scarborough tradition. Having no other important picture book to look at, they pored over the glories of the Forum, of Hadrian’s Villa, of the Baths of Caracalla, till an odd, incipient love of classic beauty began to stir in them. But there their cultivation ended. In the papers they studied only the murders, burglaries, and comic cuts. In the way of general entertainment, the movies formed their sole relaxation, but unless the play was silly they complained. Anything that asked for thought they kicked against, and Pemberton Heights kicked with them. Was that why there was a Pemberton Heights and a Marillo Park? Did the power of thought control the difference between them? Was it that where there was little or no power of thought, there was little or nothing of anything else? She unhooked her skirt and let it slip down to a circular heap about her feet. She wondered if the girl who would, in some ways, do better than herself were as lithely built as she. Mrs. Collingham had likened her to—oh, what was it? It was a spire. It sounded like a chapel. She had tossed it off as something that everybody knew about. So she had tossed off other names, taking it for granted that Jennie would have them at her fingers’ ends. The more she pondered the more sure of it she became—that she and her kind were poor and helpless chiefly because they wouldn’t take the trouble to be otherwise. Not to stray from the childish, the sentimental, and the obvious gave them the relief she found in returning to the lingo she had always used with Wray. She had used it with Bob, too—only, with Bob she had used it differently. Perhaps it was he who had used it differently. Between her and Wray, it had never been more than the medium of chaff, except on those occasions when it had become the vehicle of a half-acknowledged passion. Bob had tried to say something with it, even when slangy or colloquial. He had treated her as if she was worth talking to. He had tried to make her feel that she could talk on better themes than any they ever broached. Poor Bob—sailing away to the south, thinking that where he left her there he would find her! Little he knew! If he could only see her now! If he could only dream of what she would be doing in ten minutes’ time! If he only....