Euphemia’s interest did not relax. What strange perversity of fate was it that this little clod of humanity, so humbly placed, upon the very ground of existence, as it were, should have been instinct with that high, keen, fine appreciation of learning for its own sake?--for she knew naught of its more sordid rewards, and could not have dreamed that the relative estimation of these values, even by those of happiest opportunities, is often reversed, the reward making the worth of the learning. She did not realize an aspiration. Her wings simply fluttered because she felt the impulse to rise. Royce could not have conceived of aught more densely ignorant. He had known no mind more naturally intelligent. Its acquisitiveness hardly differentiated its objects; it only grasped them. The Third Reader bade fair to become a burden. He could scarcely put his foot on the sill of the passage before he heard the flutter of its leaves, and the much-thumbed, dog-eared old volume was offered to his hand with the restrained enthusiasm of the remark, “Ye’ll hev time ter read a piece afore dinner,” or supper, or bedtime, as the case might be. There was a certain embarrassment in these symposia. Mrs. Sims, it is true, looked on smilingly, with her vicarious affection shining in her eyes, but a chance question developed the fact that she understood hardly one word out of ten, the vocabulary of ignorance being of most constricting limitations; while Tubal Sims openly and gruffly sneered down the performance, tossing his shock head at every conclusion, and protesting that the young man read so fast, an’ with so many ups an’ downs, an’ with such a clippin’ an’ bob-tailin’ of his words that it was plumb ridic’lous. For him, give him good Scriptur’ readin’, slow an’ percise, like the l’arned men in the pul-_pit_. Did Pa’son Tynes read in that flibberty-gibberty way? He reckoned not. And he wagged his head as if he would fain take his oath on that, the spirit of affirmation so possessed him. Moreover, Royce did not consider this Third Reader a particularly meritorious compilation; he often flung its pages back and forth in vain search of a satisfactory selection, and doubtless would have declined to waste the merits of his rendering on the least vapid had it not been for the submissive, expectant face of Euphemia, as she sat waiting in her chair, bolt upright, school-wise, with her hands clasped in her lap, the subdued radiance of her eyes capable of making a much wiser man do a more foolish thing. For his own sake--he did not dream of the possibility of the development of her taste--he would fain have had a wider choice that his delicate perceptions might suffer no despite, and one day he bethought himself of the resources of memory. The young people were both down at the mill. Some domestic errand had brought Euphemia there, and he chanced to be on a ledge near at hand languidly essaying to fish. He asked her a question touching the further course