Brent,” which contained enough romance to satisfy even the exacting Brenda. One afternoon Amy had read some of her favorite passages from “The Faery Queen.” But it is no breach of confidence, perhaps, to say that Brenda felt just a little bored, and not altogether pleased with the musical lines. “I can’t pretend that I am able to appreciate all this poetry. It must be fine, or sensible people like you would n’t think so. Sometime I’m going to cultivate a taste for it, I really am; so don’t look as if I were the most imbecile person in the world. Many people don’t like poetry any better than I do,” she concluded. “But ‘Cranford,’—I ’ve begun ‘Cranford’ and I think that it is just too funny for anything. I never read anything half so funny. I wish that we could have something else like that.”
Now in so short a time the four friends could not have read so many books, had they tried to do all their work in the hours of their meeting. So they established their reading club on a rather novel plan. On the recommendation of Mrs. Barlow and Mrs. Redmond, they were making out a list of entertaining and wholesome books with which it was desirable that they should be acquainted. Each girl was to report once a week that she had read two of these books, and at each of their meetings, each girl in turn was to have the privilege of choosing the book from which she wished to have a chapter or two read.
Now, even girls who are not book-worms will read in the summer. What else is there to do in the long hours of the middle of the day, when it is too hot to wheel or walk, or
