64 COUSIN PHILLIS.
play, and with a feint of striking him, and a "Down, Rover! do hush!" she looked towards the window where we were standing, as if to reassure herself that no one had been disturbed by the noise, and seeing us, she coloured all over, and hurried away, with Rover still curving in sinuous lines about her as she walked.
"I should like to have sketched her," said Mr. Holdsworth, as he turned away. He went back to his chair, and rested in silence for a minute or two. Then he was up again.
"I would give a good deal for a book," said he. "It would keep me quiet." He began to look round; there were a few volumes at one end of the shovel-board.
"Fifth volume of Matthew Henry's Commentary," said he, reading their titles aloud. "Housewife's complete Manual; Berridge on Prayer; L' Inferno — Dante!" in great surprise. "Why, who reads this?"
"I told you Phillis read it. Don't you remember? She knows Latin and Greek, too."
"To be sure! I remember! But somehow I never put two and two together. That quiet girl, full of house-hold work, is the wonderful scholar, then, that put you to rout with her questions when you first began to come here. To be sure, 'Cousin Phillis!' What's here: a paper with the hard, obsolete words written out. I wonder what sort of a dictionary she has got. Baretti won't tell her all these words. Stay! I have got a pencil here. I'll write down the most accepted meanings, and save her a little trouble."
So he took her book and the paper back to the little round table, and employed himself in writing explanations and definitions of the words which had troubled
