o late;
he never bothered me by shifting his feet every second or two, nor by
talking to me at the hard places. In fact, he was the only one who
could do it right."

"Yes," said Jane, with an appreciative sigh; "that's pa--all over."

Mrs. Bates was twisting her long sleeves around her wrists. Presently
she shivered slightly. "Well, really," she said, "I don't see that
this place is much warmer than the other; let's try the library."

In this room our antique and Spartan Jane was made to feel the need of
yet stronger props to hold her up against the overbearing weight of
latter-day magnificence. She found herself surrounded now by a sombre
and solid splendor. Stamped hangings of Cordova leather lined the
walls, around whose bases ran a low range of ornate bookcases,
constructed with the utmost taste and skill of the cabinet-maker's
art. In the centre of the room a wide and substantial table was set
with all the paraphernalia of correspondence, and the leathery abysses
of three or four vast easy-chairs invited the reader to bookish
self-abandonment.

"How glorious!" cried Jane, as her eyes ranged over the ranks and rows
of formal and costly bindings. It all seemed doubly glorious after
that poor sole book-case of theirs at home--a huge black-walnut thing
like a wardrobe, and with a couple of drawers at the bottom,
receptacles that seemed less adapted to pamphlets than to goloshes.
"How grand!" Jane was not exigent as regarded music, but her whole
being went forth towards books. "Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer and
Hume and Gibbon, and Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets', and--"

"And twenty or thirty yards of Scott," Mrs. Bates broke in genially;
"and enough Encyclopaedia Britannica to reach around the corner and
back again. Sets--sets--sets."

"What a lovely chair to sit and study in!" cried Jane, not at all
abashed by her hostess's comments. "What a grand table to sit and
write papers at!" Writing papers was one of Jane's chief interests.

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bates with a quiet toleration, as she glanced
towards the shining inkstand and the immaculate blotting-pad. "But
really, I don't suppose I've written two lines at that table since it
was put there. And as for all these books, Heaven only knows where the
keys are to get at them with. _I_ can't do anything with them; why,
some of them weigh five or six pounds!"

Jane shriveled and shivered under this. She regretted doubly that she
had been betrayed into such