There & Back by MacDonald, George, 1824-1905

Her father's desire was to see her so married as to raise his influence in the county. He was proud of her--selfishly proud. Was she not his? Was he not "the author of her being"? If he did not quite imagine he had created her, he certainly never thought of any one but himself as having to do with her existence. All the credit in it was his! He forgot even what share her mother might claim; not to mention what in her might belong to the Sum of Things, the insensate Pan. A self-glorious man is the biggest fool in the world.

Her mother, too, was proud of her--loved her indeed after a careless fashion--was even in a sort obliged to her for having come to her. But she did not care for her enough to interfere with her. Notwithstanding the mother's coarseness, her outbursts of temper, her intolerance of opposition, she and her daughter had never yet come into collision. The reason did not entirely lie in the sweetness of the daughter, but partly in the fact that the mother had two children besides, one of whom she loved far more, and the other far less.

Barbara had no pride. She spoke in the same tone to lord and tradesman. She had been the champion of the blacks in her own country, and in England looked lovingly on the gypsies in their little tents on the windy downs.

CHAPTER XVI.

_BARBARA AND RICHARD_.

Hardly had Lestrange left the room, when Barbara entered, noiseless as a moth, which creature she somehow resembled at times: one observant friend came to see that she resembled all swift, gay, and gentle creatures in turn. She was in the same green dress which had favoured her concealment in the beech, and in which Richard had seen her afterward at the breakfast-table, but of which he had not since caught a glimmer. Her blue eyes--at times they seemed black, but they were blue--settled upon Richard the moment she entered, and resting on him seemed to lead her up to the table where he was at work.

"What have you done to make Arthur so angry?" she said, her manner as if they had known each other all their lives.

"What I am doing now, miss--making this book last a hundred years longer."

"Why should you, if he doesn't want you to do it? The book is his!"

"He will be pleased enough by and by. It's only that he thinks I can't, and is afraid I shall ruin it."

"Hadn't you better leave it then?"

"That would be to ruin it. I have gone too far for that."

"Why should you want to make it last so long? They are always printing books over again, and a new book is much nicer than an old one."

"So some people think; but others would much rather read a book in its first shape. And then books get so changed by printers and editors, that it is absolutely necessary to have copies of them as they were at first. You see this little book, miss? It don't look much, does it?"

"It looks miserable--and so dirty!"

"By the time I have done with it, it will be worth fifty, perhaps a hundred pounds--I don't know exactly. It is a play of Shakespeare's us published in his lifetime."