The next morning he stopped on his way to breakfast with some books
which he handed to Lemuel. "Don't feel at all obliged to read them,"
he said, "because I lend them to you. They won't be of the least use
to you, if you do so."
"I guess that anything you like will be worth reading," said Lemuel,
flattered by the trouble so chief a boarder as Mr. Evans had taken
with him.
"Not if they supplied a want you didn't feel. You seem to be fond of
books, and after a while you'll be wanting to lend them yourself.
I'll give you a little hint that I'm too old to profit by: remember
that you can lend a person more books in a day than he can read in a
week."
His laugh kept Lemuel shy of him still, in spite of a willingness
that the editor showed for their better acquaintance. He seemed to
wish to know about Lemuel, particularly since he had recognised the
pursuer of the horse-car in him, and this made Lemuel close up the
more. He would have liked to talk with him about the books Evans had
lent him. But when the editor stopped at the office door, where
Lemuel sat reading one of them, and asked him what he thought of it,
the boy felt that somehow it was not exactly his opinion that Mr.
Evans was getting at; and this sense of being inspected and arranged
in another's mind, though he could not formulate the operation in
his own, somehow wounded and repelled him.
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