“Well,” said Barbara, “you have not made me any wiser! You said the new one was printed correctly from that old one!”
“But I did not say the old one, as you call it, was itself printed correctly from the much older one! Look here now,” continued Richard—and mounting the library-steps, he took down another small volume, very like the former, “—here is another edition, of nearly the same date: let me read what is printed there:—
“'Then sir Bedivere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water side, and there he bound the girdle about the hilt. And then he threw the sword into the water as far as he might.'
“Now, most likely the copy from which both of these editions were printed, had the word hilts, for then they always spoke of the hilts, not hilt of a sword; and the one printer modernized it into hilt, and the other, perhaps mistaking the dim print, for hilts printed belts. To tie the girdle about the belts must simply be nonsense. But to tie the girdle to the hilts of the sword, would just give the knight what you said he would want—something long to swing it round his head with, and throw it like a stone, and the sling with it.”
“I understand.”
“You see then how the printer's blunder, which might not appear to matter much, has come to matter a great deal, for it has, it seems to me, caused a fault-spot in the loveliest poem!”
During this conversation Richard's work had scarcely relaxed; but now that a pause came it seemed to gather diligence.
“Why do you spend your time patching up books?” said Barbara.
“Because they are worth patching up; and because I earn my bread by patching them.”
“But you seem to care most for what is inside them!”