Well, I said to the Professor—­to myself I mean—­let’s see:  what is a good book?  I don’t mean books like Henry James’s (he’s Andrew’s great idol.  It always seemed to me that he had a kind of rush of words to the head and never stopped to sort them out properly).  A good book ought to have something simple about it.  And, like Eve, it ought to come from somewhere near the third rib:  there ought to be a heart beating in it.  A story that’s all forehead doesn’t amount to much.  Anyway, it’ll never get over at a Dorcas meeting.  That was the trouble with Henry James.  Andrew talked so much about him that I took one of his books to read aloud at our sewing circle over at Redfield.  Well, after one try we had to fall back on “Pollyanna.”

I haven’t been doing chores and running a farmhouse for fifteen years without getting some ideas about life—­and even about books.  I wouldn’t set my lit’ry views up against yours, Professor (I was still talking to Mifflin in my mind), no, nor even against Andrew’s—­but as I say, I’ve got some ideas of my own.  I’ve learned that honest work counts in writing books just as much as it does in washing dishes.  I guess Andrew’s books must be some good after all because he surely does mull over them without end.  I can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt.  A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can.  And I guess it won’t matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I’m rated A-1 in the kitchen.  That’s what I used to think as I polished and scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about getting dinner.  If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes the cat would get into the custard.  No woman in the country sits down for fifteen consecutive minutes between sunrise and sunset, anyway, unless she has half a dozen servants.  And nobody knows anything about literature unless he spends most of his life sitting down.  So there you are.

The cultivation of philosophic reflection was a new experience for me.  Peg ambled along contentedly and the dog trailed under Parnassus where I had tied him.  I read “Vanity Fair” and thought about all sorts of things.  Once I got out to pick some scarlet maple leaves that attracted me.  The motors passing annoyed me with their dust and noise, but by and by one of them stopped, looked at my outfit curiously, and then asked to see some books.  I put up the flaps for them and we pulled off to one side of the road and had a good talk.  They bought two or three books, too.