flattery and
compliments.

And so it was settled. Jeffreys could scarcely believe what had
happened to him when, half an hour later, Mr Rimbolt being called away
on business, he found himself taking a preliminary survey of his new
preserves, and preparing himself seriously for his duties as private
librarian at Wildtree Towers.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

SNOB AND SNUB.

Jeffreys was not long in finding out the best and the worst of his new
lot at Wildtree Towers. To an ordinary thick-skinned fellow, with his
love of books and partiality for boys, his daily life during the six
months which followed his introduction under Mr Rimbolt's roof might
have seemed almost enviable. The whole of each morning was devoted to
the duties of the library, which, under his conscientious management,
gradually assumed the order of a model collection. A librarian is born,
not made, and Jeffreys seemed unexpectedly and by accident to have
dropped into the one niche in life for which he was best suited. Mr
Rimbolt was delighted to see his treasures gradually emerging from the
chaos of an overcrowded lumber-room into the serene and dignified
atmosphere of a library of well-arranged and well-tended volumes. He
allowed his librarian _carte blanche_ with regard to shelves and
binding. He agreed to knock a third room into the two which already
constituted the library, and to line it with bookcases. He even went
the length of supporting a clever bookbinder at Overstone for several
months with work on his own volumes, and, greatest sacrifice of all,
forebore his craze of buying right and left for the same space of time
until the arrears of work should be overtaken, and a clear idea could be
formed of what he already had and what he wanted. Jeffreys revelled in
the work, and when he discovered that he had to deal with one of the
most valuable private collections in the country, his pride and sense of
responsibility advanced step by step. He occupied his leisure hours in
the study of bibliography; he read books on the old printers and their
works; he spent hours with the bookbinder and printer at Overstone,
studying the mechanism of a book; he even studied architecture, in
connexion with the ventilation and lighting of libraries, and began to
teach himself German, in order to be able to master the stores of book-
lore buried in that rugged language.

All this, then, was congenial and delightful work. He was left his own
master in it, a