Ellinor looked up from the little packet of powdered herbs that for the last hour, in the stillness of the laboratory, she had been weighing and dividing.—Great had been her delight to find her help accepted without fresh demur, for she was bent on making herself indispensable.
“My ‘Woodville,’ child!” repeated Master Simon. “Ah, true, true, it has been taken back to the library. David is a good lad, but I could wish him less absolutely particular about his books. Books are made for use, not to show a pretty binding on a shelf! But stars and books—’tis all he cares for!”
Ellinor rose and slipped from the room. Well, she remembered the old “Woodville,” in its grey-tooled vellum with the thick bands and clasps. She knew its very resting-place, between “Master Parkinson,” in black gilt calf, and “Gerard’s Herbal,” in oaken boards.
Once outside she stretched her limbs after the cramping work and began humming the refrain of a little song that came back to her, she knew not how or why, as she plunged into the loneliness of the rambling corridors:
’Twas you, sir, ’twas you, sir!
I tell you nothing new, sir—
’Twas you kissed the pretty girl!
At a bend of the passage she stopped: she thought she heard a stealthy footfall behind, and her heart beat faster for the moment with a sense of long-forgotten child-terrors. Then the woman reasserted herself. Yet, as she took up the burden of her catch again and walked on steadily, Mrs. Marvel tossed her head in just the same defiant manner as had been the wont of the child Ellinor, who would have died rather than own to fear.
Dim was the library, but with a warm and golden dimness that was as far removed from gloom as the warm twilight of a golden day.
The scent of the burning wood upon the hearth mingled with the spice of the old leather—Persian, Russian, Morocco, Calf—with the pungency of the old parchment and of the old print upon ancient paper. The air was filled as with the breath of ages.