hip of the wink, which meant that Tom was more comic than Tom
thought, with his locked bookcases and his simple vanities of a
collector. Tom collected books. As Edwin gazed at the bookcase he
perceived that it was filled mainly with rich bindings. And suddenly
all his own book-buying seemed to him petty and pitiful. He saw books
in a new aspect. He had need of no instruction, of no explanation. The
amorous care with which Tom drew a volume from the bookcase was enough
in itself to enlighten Edwin completely. He saw that a book might be
more than reading matter, might be a bibelot, a curious jewel, to
satisfy the lust of the eye and of the hand. He instantly condemned his
own few books as being naught; he was ashamed of them. Each book in
that bookcase was a separate treasure.

"See this, my boy?" said Tom, handing to Charlie a calf-bound volume,
with a crest on the sides. "Six volumes. Picked them up at Stafford--
Assizes, you know. It's the Wilbraham crest. I never knew they'd been
selling their library."

Charlie accepted the book with respect. Its edges were gilt, and the
paper thin and soft. Edwin looked over his shoulder, and saw the
title-page of Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris," in French. The
volume had a most romantic, foreign, even exotic air. Edwin desired it
fervently, or something that might rank equal with it.

"How much did they stick you for this lot?" asked Charlie.

Tom held up one finger.

"Quid?" Charlie wanted to be sure. Tom nodded.

"Cheap as dirt, of course!" said Tom. "Binding's worth more than that.
Look at the other volumes. Look at them!"

"Pity it's only a second edition," said Charlie.

"Well, damn it, man! One can't have everything."

Charlie passed the volume to Edwin, who fingered it with the strangest
delight. Was it possible that this exquisitely delicate and uncustomary
treasure, which seemed to exhale all the charm of France and the savour
of her history, had been found at Stafford? He had been to Stafford
himself. He had read "Notre-Dame" himself, but in English, out of a
common book like any common book--not out of a bibelot.

"You've read it, of course, Clayhanger?" Tom said.

"Oh!" Edwin answered humbly. "Only in a translation." Yet there was a
certain falseness in his humility, for he was proud of having read the
work. What sort of a duffer would he have appeared had he been obliged
to reply `No'?

"You ought to read French in Frenc