Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILD WOODLAND Dr. Blanton enjoyed, as he did most things in life, being shown over the settlement-church: but his politest endeavors could not conceal from his nephew that the people in it, workers and benefited alike, interested him fatally more than methods or apparatus. It was a little trying to have him ignore the pride of Phoebe's life, the swimming-pool, in favor of a small and very soiled child on its brink who would not believe that it was best to be washed before you went swimming; it was almost more than trying to find him discoursing in the middle of the library about a fine bit of incunabula found in a Memphis settlement house—presented, according to his leisurely tale, by a grateful Nuremburg Jew who could not read. "It was very instructive," said Uncle Andrew with innocent pride. "I went on the principle that somewhere in that ancestry had been scholarship, as the book had always been in the family's possession— even though that family was sunk in illiteracy now. People do not believe enough in heredity, my dear children. And sure enough, the second daughter . . ." She was now an authority on Greek texts, it appeared; but they switched him to the filing-system, where slim, blue-eyed Silence Everington was waiting alertly for them. But his reaction: "Miss Everington is either a New Englander or a Virginian of practically pure English stock, isn't she? She gives me the impression of having something on her mind. You wouldn't object to humoring my in- quisitiveness to the extent of having her to tea this afternoon, would you, my dear Phoebe?" Phoebe squeezed Dr. Blanton's hand. "There's no use worrying you—you shall see what you want to see, and if you want to watch the wheels go round in Silence instead of in the Settlement, why, you shall! Only there...