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"What is it, old man?" said Roger. "Want something to read in bed?"
He turned on the light in that alcove. Everything appeared normal.
Then he noticed a book that projected an inch or so beyond the even
line of bindings. It was a fad of Roger's to keep all his books
in a flat row on the shelves, and almost every evening at closing
time he used to run his palm along the backs of the volumes to level
any irregularities left by careless browsers. He put out a hand
to push the book into place. Then he stopped.
"Queer again," he thought. "Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell!
I looked for that book last night and couldn't find it. When that
professor fellow was here. Maybe I'm tired and can't see straight.
I'll go to bed."
The next day was a date of some moment. Not only was it
Thanksgiving Day, with the November meeting of the Corn Cob Club
scheduled for that evening, but Mrs. Mifflin had promised to get home
from Boston in time to bake a chocolate cake for the booksellers.
It was said that some of the members of the club were faithful
in attendance more by reason of Mrs. Mifflin's chocolate cake,
and the cask of cider that her brother Andrew McGill sent down from
the Sabine Farm every autumn, than on account of the bookish conversation.
Roger spent the morning in doing a little housecleaning, in preparation
for his wife's return. He was a trifle abashed to find how many mingled
crumbs and tobacco cinders had accumulated on the dining-room rug.
He cooked himself a modest lunch of lamb chops and baked potatoes,
and was pleased by an epigram concerning food that came into his mind.
"It's not the food you dream about that matters," he said to himself;
"it's the vittles that walk right in and become a member of the family."
He felt that this needed a little polishing and rephrasing, but that there
was a germ of wit in it. He had a habit of encountering ideas at his
solitary meals.
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