Always planning for her coming
back, I bought in a few months' time another cart, and what do you think
I planned to do with it? I'll tell you. I planned to fit it up with
shelves and books for her reading, and to have a seat in it where I could
sit and see her read, and think that I had been her first teacher. Not
hurrying over the job, I had the fittings knocked together in contriving
ways under my own inspection, and here was her bed in a berth with
curtains, and there was her reading-table, and here was her writing-desk,
and elsewhere was her books in rows upon rows, picters and no picters,
bindings and no bindings, gilt-edged and plain, just as I could pick 'em
up for her in lots up and down the country, North and South and West and
East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, Here and there and gone
astray, Over the hills and far away. And when I had got together pretty
well as many books as the cart would neatly hold, a new scheme come into
my head, which, as it turned out, kept my time and attention a good deal
employed, and helped me over the two years' stile.
Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be the owner of things.
I shouldn't wish, for instance, to go partners with yourself in the Cheap
Jack cart. It's not that I mistrust you, but that I'd rather know it was
mine.
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