Page:Pain--Eliza.djvu/109

Shakespeare have been glad of a little pleasure—innocent, profitable, and entertaining. However, if you think I am not capable of—"

"What do you want to read?"

"What would you like me to read?"

"Miss Sakers lent me this." She handed me a paper-covered volume, entitled, "The Murglow Mystery; or, The Stain on the Staircase."

"Trash like this is not literature," I said. However, to please her, I glanced at the first page. Half an hour later I said that I should be very sorry to read a book of that stamp out loud.

"Then why do you go on reading it to yourself?"

"Strictly speaking, I am not reading it. I am glancing at it."

When Eliza got up to go to bed, an hour afterward, she asked me if I was still glancing. I kept my temper.

"Try not to be so infernally unreasonable," I said. "If Miss Sakers lends us a book, it is discourteous not to look at it." 83