with papa and mamma, just as we used to do before mamma became so weak and ill, knowing few people and living more amongst books than in the world, and somebody had written a novel about such people as you, and described your daily life and your way of thinking, even though it was not exactly true, and things were said in it that none of you had exactly said, and things were done that you might have done if circumstances had been a little changed, it would have been very interesting to me, and to papa too. It would not have done us any harm to have gone with you to the plough, or with Jessie and George to Gundabook, or to have watched your mother's patience with Biddy, or Biddy's wonderful kindness of heart to her poor relations in Ireland, and the effort she makes to save money to fetch them here, while at the same time she can scarcely speak the truth about them or anything else, because she does not seem to know really what truth is. This would have been just as unlike my real life and as unlike the people I lived amongst then as the novels that we are reading now are unlike the life at Branxholm; but it would have done me good, I think, and not harm."
"But these books are not written like that. Adventure after adventure, murder, bigamy, fraud, and conspiracy heaped up as they never
