Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/53

Rh envy him his arrière-pensée. At any rate it was through the receipt of this impression of him that by the time we returned I had acquired the feeling of intimacy I have noted. Before we got up for the homeward stretch, he alluded to his wife's having once—or perhaps more than once—asked him whether he should like Dolcino to read Beltraffio. I think he was unconscious at the moment of all that this conveyed to me—as well, doubtless, of my extreme curiosity to hear what he had replied. He had said that he hoped very much Dolcino would read all his works—when he was twenty; he should like him to know what his father had done. Before twenty it would be useless; he would n't understand them.

"And meanwhile do you propose to hide them,—to lock them up in a drawer?" Mrs. Ambient had inquired.

"Oh, no; we must simply tell him that they are not intended for small boys. If you bring him up properly, after that he won't touch them."

To this Mrs. Ambient had made answer that it would be very awkward when he was about fifteen; and I asked her husband if it was his opinion in general, then, that young people should not read novels.

"Good ones—certainly not!" said my companion. I suppose I had had other views, for I remember saying that, for myself, I was not sure it was bad for them, if the novels were "good" enough. "Bad for them, I don't say so much!" Ambient exclaimed. "But very bad, I am afraid, for the novel!" That