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"Your own father and mother?"

Another sip of water, to cool the heat of the mustard.

"They passed on."

As light and energetic as Papa was, I must say conversing with me was heavy work for him. Finally, Helen could stand it no longer, and she said, in an ever so low and respectful tone of voice, "Oh, Papa, I told you of Louisa’s tragedy. She’s disconsolate. We should ..."

Papa ceased asking questions for now, but little looks, like little sparks of light, continued to flash across the table. After supper, I begged to be excused and went up to my room. I wasn’t tired at all, but I saw that I was going to have to make the most of my ill health, so as to keep to my room and avoid Papa as much as possible.

This did not prove to be easy, as Papa was quite as cordial as Helen by nature, and there was the added spur of my mysteriousness that encouraged him to search me out and attempt to draw me. The very next morning, though I wasn’t expected to take breakfast downstairs (Helen did not, either), Lorna brought me a note along with my tray, inviting me to take a look at Papa’s library. Helen’s door was still closed, as by Thomas’s watch it was not much after seven, so there would be no protection from that quarter. Papa’s handwriting was tall and narrow, but full of whorls and flourishes. It surprised me—perhaps I had expected it to be made up of a sort of pecking.

Papa was standing in a small room off the parlor, as sprucely fitted up as if he had been standing there like a diminutive statue all night long, only awaiting my coming to bring him to life. "Ah, my dear—Louisa, is it? Louisa Bisket. Unusual name, indeed. Never heard it before in these parts. But I know you aren’t from these parts by your own testimony, don’t I?"

I smiled and wished him good morning. He bowed over my hand.

"There was a Bisket at college with me, a class or two ahead. Tall fellow. Can’t remember where his people were from, though."

I hazarded a question: where had Papa gone to college?

"That was a good time of life, wasn’t it? College. Only spent a year there, in fact. Princeton College, it was. Not too many men from the west in those days at that college. They thought me an odd bird indeed!" He laughed. "Even though I had curls enough, and great mustaches, to boot!" He laughed again, and I laughed, too.

"However, the ministry was not the life for me. I was made to be a farmer, though a reading farmer. You’ll see that I have a great many works on agriculture here in my library. I make it my practice to emulate the great Mr. Jefferson, who was a terrific improver and had sound ideas upon government and farming, and architecture, too! This house was designed according to Jeffersonian principles, though of course we have humbler materials to work with here in the west. Ah, well. The bank is an evil institution, and the rush of our civilization into the arms of money, as it were, is a great corruption!

"These are my books!" He turned and swept his little arm in an arc toward the two walls of books. I would guess that they numbered five hundred or so, indeed a sizable library for a Missouri farmer, and possibly a matter, had she known it, of significant surprise to Mrs. Bush, who always held that Missourians read only a few words of the Bible and wrote only their first names.

I did as I was expected, which was to step over to the shelves and admire. I couldn’t resist saying, "My husband was a great reader." There was plenty to admire—Mr. Shakespeare’s entire works, and those of Mr. Milton, and Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Joseph Addison. The poems of Mr. Pope were bound in red calf and decorated in gold, and of course there were some volumes of Mr. Jefferson’s writings, as well. There was a whole shelf of volumes in French, and ten or a dozen titles in what appeared to be German. As I perused them, Papa stood back, his hands clasped behind him and a great smile on his face. Ivanhoe, The Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy, Marmion, Quentin Durward. I touched one, and Papa said, "I am a lover of Scott. He knows what freedom means to a man!" I put my hand down at