FullReads

“But those books are just the thing for a rainy day—nice light reading. And for guests. But now this—this old book on saddlery. When we had horses you used to look at it, but now, with motors and all—”

“I know, but I still like to browse in it now and then. ”

“Very well. ”

Theo fled. She remembered piles of shabby books in the attic. While the Dukes were discovering that after all there wasn’t one of the four hundred volumes in the library which they weren’t going to read right away Theo heaped the dining-room table with attic waifs. She called her parents. The first thing Mrs. Duke spied was a Tennyson, printed in 1890 in a type doubtless suitable to ants, small sand-colored ants, but illegible to the human eye. Mrs. Duke shrieked: “Oh! You weren’t thinking of giving that handsome Tennyson away! Why, it’s a very handsome edition. Besides, it’s one of the first books your father and I ever had. It was given to us by your Aunt Gracie!”

“But Moth-er dear! You haven’t even seen the book for years!”

“Well, I’ve thought of it often. ”

“How about all these Christmas books?”

“Now, Theodora, if you wouldn’t be so impatient, but kindly give your father and me time to look them over—”

Two hours and seventeen minutes after dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Duke had almost resignedly agreed to present the following literary treasures to the soldiers of these United States for their edification and entertainment:

One sixth-grade geography. One Wild Flowers of Northern Wisconsin. Two duplicate copies of Little Women. The Congressional Record for part of 1902. One black, depressed, religious volume entitled The Dragon’s Fight With the Woman for 1260 Prophetic Days, from which the last seven hundred days were missing, leaving the issue of the combat in serious doubt. Four novels, all by women, severally called Griselda of the Red Hand, Bramleigh of British Columbia, Lady Tip–Tippet, and Billikins’ Lonely Christmas.

Theo looked at them. She laughed. Then she was sitting by the table, her head down, sobbing. Her parents glanced at each other in hurt amazement.

“I can’t understand the girl. After all the pains we took to try to help her!” sighed Mrs. Duke later, when they were undressing.

“O-o-o-oh,” yawned Mr. Duke as he removed his collar from the back button—with the slight, invariable twinge in his rheumatic shoulder blades. “Oh, she’s nervous and tired from her work down at that Red Cross place. I’m in favor of her having a little experience, but at the same time there’s no need of overdoing. Plenty of other people to help out. ”

He intended to state this paternal wisdom to Theo at breakfast, but Theo at breakfast was not one to whom to state things paternally. Her normally broad shining lips were sucked in. She merely nodded to her parents, then attended with strictness to her oatmeal and departed—after privily instructing Lizzie to give the smaller pile of books in the dining room to the junk collector.

Three novels from the pile she did take to the public library for the A. L. A. To these she added twenty books, mostly trigonometries, bought with her own pocket money. Consequently she had no lunch save a glass of milk for twenty days. But as the Dukes didn’t know that, everybody was happy.

The battle of the books led to other sanguinary skirmishes.

VI

There was the fireless cooker.

It was an early, homemade fireless cooker, constructed in the days when anything in the shape of one box inside another, with any spare scraps of sawdust between, was regarded as a valuable domestic machine. Aside from the fact that it didn’t cook, the Dukes’ cooker took up room in the kitchen, gathered a film of grease which caught a swamp of dust, and regularly banged Lizzie’s shins. For six years the Dukes had talked about having it repaired. They had run through the historical, scientific, and financial aspects of cookers at least once a season.