She placed her bundles on the counter with alacrity, and her thin, gloved hand hovered over the rows of volumes.
"You must give me some hint as to the destination of the gift," she declared, turning upon him with a sparrow-like motion of the head and a significant smile.
"No," he said, laughing at her intimation, "it isn't what you suspect. I want a book for an old-fashioned gentleman, past middle life. There seems to be nothing here but the latest novels."
"As to that," she responded, "the bishop reads everything, from the Talmud to a Nick Carter detective story."
"Neither of the classics you mention will fit the present case, however."
"I know!" she cried. "'The Bible in Spain.' You need n't look dubious; it is n't a Sunday-school book, as you might think from the title. You may be sure that Felicity Wycliffe would n't like insipid literature, and this is one of her favourite books."
Leigh's dubious look had not been due to ignorance of the book, but to a doubt as to whether his father possessed it. On reflection, he thought the choice a safe one, and his reply left his adviser undisturbed in her conviction that she was admitting him into the select circle of Borrovians.
"The recommendation goes," he said. "Not," he corrected himself, "that I would not have purchased it upon yours alone, Mrs. Parr."
"Oh, I'm not vain of my knowledge of books," she assured him. "Miss Wycliffe is my literary conscience. I do miss her so much! When she 's away, I 'm only half a person, I declare; and when she 's here, I 'm just nobody at all, because I lose myself in her."
"You make the friendships of men pale into insignificance," he remarked jestingly, yet not without a new respect, inspired by this glimpse of her capacity for loyalty to one who overshadowed her.