She wrung her hands, but indignation came to her with my explanation, which was that while R.L.S.was at it we others were only 'prentices cutting our fingers on his tools.

'I could never thole his books,' said my mother immediately, and indeed vindictively.
'You have not read any of them,' I reminded her.
'And never will,' said she with spirit.
And I have no doubt that she called him a dark character that very day.
For weeks too, if not for months, she adhered to her determination not to read him, though I, having come to my senses and seen that there is a place for the 'prentice, was taking a pleasure, almost malicious, in putting 'The Master of Ballantrae' in her way.

I would place it on her table so that it said good-morning to her when she rose.

She would frown, and carrying it downstairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace it on its book-shelf.

I would wrap it up in the cover she had made for the latest Carlyle: she would skin it contemptuously and again bring it down.