"Now the circle is complete and the picture perfect. Don't light the lamps yet, please, but talk away and let me make a mental study of you. I seldom find so charming a scene to paint," said Randal, beginning to enjoy himself immensely, with a true artist's taste for novelty and effect.

"Tell us about your book, for we have been reading it as it comes out in the magazine and are much exercised about how it's going to end," began Saul, gallantly throwing himself into the breach, for a momentary embarrassment fell upon the women at the idea of sitting for their portraits before they were ready.

"Do you really read my poor serial up here and do me the honor to like it?" asked the novelist, both flattered and amused; for his work was of the artistic sort with microscopic studies of character and careful representations of modern life.

"Sakes alive, why shouldn't we?" cried Aunt Plumy. "We have some education, though we aren't real genteel. We've got a town library, kept up by the women, mostly, with fairs and tea parties and so on. We have the major magazines reg'lar, and Saul reads out the pieces while Ruth sews and I knit, my eyes bein' poor. Our winter is long, and evenin's would be kind of lonesome if we didn't have novels and newspapers to cheer us up."

"I am very glad I can help to beguile them for you. Now tell me what you honestly think of my work. Criticism is always valuable, and I should really like yours, Mrs. Basset," said Randal, wondering what the good woman would make of the delicate analysis and worldly wisdom on which he prided himself.

Short work, as Aunt Plumy soon showed him, for she rather enjoyed freeing her mind at all times and decidedly resented the insinuation that country folk could not appreciate literature as well as city people.

"I'm no great jedge about anything but naturalness in books, and it really does seem as if some of your men and women are dreadfully uncomfortable creatures. It 'pears to me it isn't wise to be always picking ourselves to pieces and pryin' into things that ought to come gradual by way of experience and the visitations of Providence. Flowers won't blow worth a cent ef you pull 'em open. Better wait and see what they can do alone. I do relish the smart sayin's, the odd ways of furrin parts, and the sarcastic slaps at folks' weak spots. But I knows, we can't live on spice cake and rouge cheeks, and I do feel as if books was more sustainin' ef they was full of everyday people and things, like good bread and butter. Them that goes to the heart and aren't soon forgotten is the kind I hanker for. Miss Terry's books now, and Miss Stowe's, and Dickens's Christmas pieces-them is real sweet and cheering, to my mind."