"My lord!"
"Hey?" The old chemist looked up over his spectacles, held for an instant a gallipot suspended between finger and thumb, and set it down with nice judgment. He was extremely bald, and he pushed his spectacles high up on his scalp. Then he smiled benevolently. "What can I do for you, my dears?"
The boy stepped forward bravely, while Tilda—the game for once taken out of her hands—could only admire.
"If you would tell us where the Island is—it is called Holmness—"
Tilda caught her breath. But the old chemist still bent forward, and still with his kindly smile.
"Holmness?—an island?" he repeated in a musing echo. "Let me see—"
"We ain't sure it's an island, sir," put in Tilda, plucking up her courage a little.
"It will be in the Gazetteer, of course," said the old chemist with a happy thought; "and you'll find that in the Free Library."
"Gazetteer"—"Free Library." To Tilda these were strange words—names of wide oceans, perhaps, or of far foreign countries. But the boy caught at the last word: he remembered Prospero's—
"Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough,"