There is no
more spirit in me."
"Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that! Why," he said with
some enthusiasm, "I should be only too glad, my dear Tess, to help
you to anything in the way of history, or any line of reading you
would like to take up--"
"It is a lady again," interrupted she, holding out the bud she had
peeled.
"What?"
"I meant that there are always more ladies than lords when you come
to peel them."
"Never mind about the lords and ladies. Would you like to take up
any course of study--history, for example?"
"Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about it than I
know already."
"Why not?"
"Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row
only--finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody
just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me
sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and
your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and
that your coming life and doings 'll be like thousands's and
thousands'."
"What, really, then, you don't want to learn anything?"
"I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on the just and
the unjust alike," she answered, with a slight quaver in her voice.
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