Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/133

 The old woman had evolved her own scheme of reading, a plan which Irene condemned by the word "skimming," but which satisfied Julia Shane because it revealed the plot without an unnecessary waste of time over long, involved descriptions of scenery and minute analyses of incomprehensible Gallic passions. Under the skimming system she read a few pages at the beginning and then turned to the end to learn the outcome of the tale. After this, she plunged into the middle of the book and read a page or two here and there until her curiosity was satisfied and her interest flagged. And at last the book was tossed aside to be carried off by the mulatto woman, who never failed to go through each volume carefully as though by looking at the words frequently enougi: she would be able at length to unlock the secrets of foreign tongues. The books which lay on the floor beside the bed had been "skimmed." They lay prostrate and sprawled like the dead soldiers of an army. The titles served as an index of the old woman's favorite authors. They appeared some in black ink, some in red, some even in blue. . . Paul Marguerite, Marcel Prévost, Pierre Loti, Paul Bourget, Collette Willy and, strange to relate, Anatole France represented by L'Ile des Penguins which, it seemed, had baffled the "skimming" system, for of all the lot it was the only volume in which every page had been cut.

After she grew weary, she tossed aside Les Anges Gardiens which she had been reading and sat leaning back with her eyes closed. Perhaps she pondered the doings of the four evil governesses in the Prévost tale; perhaps she turned her thoughts to the Town and Mrs. Julis Harrison whom she had sent away because she "was not in a mood to be bored." It is even possible that she knew at this very moment that in the sandstone house of the Harrisons, they were discussing her affairs. She was too wise and too worldly not to have known what Belle Harrison would say of her. Yet she appeared calm and content enough, completely indifferent to the opinions of her acquaintances, of the Town—indeed of all the world. She had reached the time when such things are no longer of any importance.

So great was her indifference that in more than three months she had left the house only once and then to follow the coffin