“Mother,” suggested Roger, “why don’t you subscribe for the papers yourself?”

Miss Mattie dropped her knife and fork and gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment.  “Roger,” she said, kindly, “I declare if sometimes you don’t remind me of my people more’n your pa’s.  I never thought of that myself and I dunno how you come to.  I’ll do it the very first time I go down to the store.  The postmaster’s wife can get the addresses without tearin’ off the covers, and after I get ’em read she can borrow mine, and not be always makin’ the people at the Ridge so mad that she’s runnin’ the risk of losin’ her job.  If you ain’t the beatenest!”

Basking in the unaccustomed warmth of his mother’s approval, Roger finished his supper in peace.  Afterward, while she was clearing up, he even dared to take up the much-criticised book and lose himself once more in his father’s beloved Emerson.

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  Childish Memories]

All his childish memories of his father had been blurred into one by the mists of the intervening years.  As though it were yesterday, he could see the library upstairs, which was still the same, and the grave, silent, kindly man who sat dreaming over his books.  When the child entered, half afraid because the room was so quiet, the man had risen and caught him in his arms with such hungry passion that he had almost cried out.

“Oh, my son,” came in the deep, rich voice, vibrant with tenderness; “my dear little son!”

[Sidenote:  The Priceless Legacy]

That was all, save a few old photographs and the priceless legacy of the books.  The library was not a large one, but it had been chosen by a man of discriminating, yet catholic, taste.  The books had been used and were not, as so often happens, merely ornaments.  Page after page had been interlined and there was scarcely a volume which was not rich in marginal notes, sometimes questioning in character, but indicating always understanding and appreciation.

As soon as he learned to read, Roger began to spend his leisure hours in this library.  When he could not understand a book, he put it aside and took up another.  Always there were pictures and sometimes many of them, for in his later years Laurence Austin had contracted the baneful habit of extra-illustration.  Never maternal, save in the limited physical sense, Miss Mattie had been glad to have the child out of her way.

Day by day, the young mind grew and expanded in its own way.  Year by year, Roger came to an affectionate knowledge of his father, through the medium of the marginal notes.  He wondered, sometimes, that a pencil mark should so long outlive the fine, strong body of the man who made it.  It seemed pitiful, in a way, and yet he knew that books and letters are the things that endure, in a world of transition and decay.

The underlined passages and the marginal comments gave evidence of an extraordinary love of beauty, in whatever shape or form.  And yet—­the parlour, which was opened only on Sunday—­was hideous with a gaudy carpet, stuffed chairs, family portraits done in crayon and inflicted upon the house by itinerant vendors of tea and coffee, and there was a basket of wax flowers, protected by glass, on the marble-topped “centre-table.”