"Yes, yes," said Puddifoot, his eyes staring up and down the street, as though they would burst out of his head. "Very good--very good. See you later then," and so went blowing down the hill.
Ronder passed under the gloomy portals of the Library and found his way, through faith rather than vision, up the stone stairs that smelt of mildew and blotting-paper, into the high dingy room. He had had a sudden desire the night before to read an old story by Bage that he had not seen since he was a boy--the violent and melancholy Hermsprong.
It had come to him, as it were, in his dreams--a vision of himself rocking in a hammock in his uncle's garden on a wonderful summer afternoon, eating apples and reading Hermsprong, the book discovered, he knew not by what chance, in the dusty depths of his uncle's library. He would like to read it again. Hermsprong! the very scent of the skin of the apple, the blue-necked tapestry of light between the high boughs came back to him. He was a boy again.... He was brought up sharply by meeting the little red-rimmed eyes of Miss Milton. Red-rimmed to-day, surely, with recent weeping. She sat humped up on her chair, glaring out into the room.
"It's all right, Miss Milton," he said, smiling at her. "It's an old book I want. I won't bother you. I'll look for myself."
He passed into the further dim secrecies of the Library, whither so few penetrated. Here was an old ladder, and, mounted upon it, he confronted the vanished masterpieces of Holcroft and Radcliffe, Lewis and Jane Porter, Clara Reeve and MacKenzie, old calf-bound ghosts who threw up little clouds of sighing dust as he touched them with his fingers. He was happily preoccupied with his search, balancing his stout body precariously on the trembling ladder, when he fancied that he heard a sigh.
He stopped and listened; this time there could be no mistake. It was a sigh of prodigious intent and meaning, and it came from Miss Milton. Impatiently he turned back to his books; he would find his Bage as quickly as possible and go. He was not at all in the mood for lamentations from Miss Milton. Ah! there was Barham Downs. Hermsprong could not be far away. Then suddenly there came to him quite unmistakably a sob, then another, then two more, finally something that horribly resembled hysterics. He came down from his ladder and crossed the room.
"My dear Miss Milton!" he exclaimed. "Is there anything I can do?"
She presented a strange and unpoetic appearance, huddled up in her wooden arm-chair, one fat leg crooked under her, her head sinking into her ample bosom, her whole figure shaking with convulsive grief, the chair creaking sympathetically with her.
Ronder, seeing that she was in real distress, hurried up to her.
"My dear Miss Milton, what is it?"