The Board

The girl had pried back the cloth at the corner of an old cover, and under it she found a panel of grey board, stiff as a roof slate. She carried it to the table where Nyra sat with the ledger. “What is this hard part for?” she asked. “The cloth is soft, but this will not bend.”

“That is the board,” said Nyra. “It is the stiff panel a cover is built upon, and the cloth you see is only its coat. The board is what stands between a careless hand and the pages, and what holds a book true on the shelf when a season of damp would make a soft thing curl.”

A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there.

“So the soft part is for the eye,” she said, “and the hard part is for the years.” Nyra nodded. “The board takes the knocks a page could not survive. It asks for no thanks. It only stands.”

So she set the panel back under its coat of cloth and pressed it flat and true. The book keeps the board, and you keep the shielding of it.