I've been reading Rudyard Kipling for the last time.' 'Really! Don't you like him?
Why ?' 'I feel all the time, somehow, as if he were calling me by my Christian name without an introduction, or as if he wanted me to exchange hats with him,' she said.

'He's so fearfully familiar with his readers.' 'But you think he keeps at a respectful distance from his characters?
However--why worry about books at all, Mrs Ottley?
Flowers, lilies of the field, and so forth, don't toil or spin; why should they belong to libraries?
I don't think you ever ought to read--except perhaps sometimes a little poetry, or romance....

You see, that is what you are, rather, isn't it ?' 'Don't you care for books ?' she answered, ignoring the compliment.

'I should have thought you loved them, and knew everything about them.

I'm not sure that I know.' 'You know quite enough, believe me,' he answered earnestly.