Barbara had no pride. She spoke in the same tone
to lord and tradesman. She had been the champion
of the blacks in her own country, and in England looked
lovingly on the gypsies in their little tents on the
windy downs.
BARBARA AND RICHARD.
Hardly had Lestrange left the room, when Barbara entered,
noiseless as a moth, which creature she somehow resembled
at times: one observant friend came to see that
she resembled all swift, gay, and gentle creatures
in turn. She was in the same green dress which
had favoured her concealment in the beech, and in
which Richard had seen her afterward at the breakfast-table,
but of which he had not since caught a glimmer.
Her blue eyes—at times they seemed black,
but they were blue—settled upon Richard
the moment she entered, and resting on him seemed to
lead her up to the table where he was at work.
“What have you done to make Arthur so angry?”
she said, her manner as if they had known each other
all their lives.
“What I am doing now, miss—making
this book last a hundred years longer.”
“Why should you, if he doesn’t want you
to do it? The book is his!”
“He will be pleased enough by and by. It’s
only that he thinks I can’t, and is afraid I
shall ruin it.”
“Hadn’t you better leave it then?”
“That would be to ruin it. I have gone
too far for that.”
“Why should you want to make it last so long?
They are always printing books over again, and a new
book is much nicer than an old one.”
“So some people think; but others would much
rather read a book in its first shape. And then
books get so changed by printers and editors, that
it is absolutely necessary to have copies of them as
they were at first. You see this little book,
miss? It don’t look much, does it?”
“It looks miserable—and so dirty!”
“By the time I have done with it, it will be
worth fifty, perhaps a hundred pounds—I
don’t know exactly. It is a play of Shakespeare’s
us published in his lifetime.”
“But they print better and more correctly now,
don’t they?”
“Yes; but us I said, they often change things.”
“How is that?”
“Sometimes they will change a word, thinking
it ought to be another; sometimes they will alter
a passage because they do not understand it, putting
it all wrong, and throwing aside a great meaning for
a small one: the change of a letter may alter
the whole idea. But they often do it just by
blundering. Shall I tell you an instance that
came to my knowledge yesterday? It is but a trifle,
yet is worth telling.—Of course you know
the Idylls of the King?”
“No, I don’t Why do you say ’of
course’?”
“Because I thought every English lady read Tennyson.”
“Ah, but I was born in New Zealand!—Tell
me the blunder, though.”
