One day, the Summer Boarder, rummaging in a cupboard in his bedroom, saw, on a top-shelf, an old, dust-covered book, and took it down and knocked the dust off and opened it. And then he sank in a chair, gasping. There, in his hand, lay a perfect copy of a fifteenth-century book, so rare that there is no copy of it in either the British Museum or in the Bodleian Library—no, nor at the Vatican!
He stared at it for a long time, and then, carrying it as some men would carry a rare diamond, he went down to the kitchen, where Mrs. Maidment was making plum-pies.
"This is a queer old book which I found in my cupboard, Mrs. Maidment," he said. "May I look at it?"
"Aye, and welcome, sir!" said Mrs. Maidment. "And keep it, too, sir, if you'll accept of it. Eh, we'd a lot of old stuff like that in that box there in the window-place, but last year——" And then the Summer Boarder heard the story of the travelling bookseller.
"And I'm sure, sir, it were very kind of the man," concluded Mrs. Maidment, "and I've always said so, to give Mary Ellen three new books, and bound so beautiful, for naught but a lot of old rubbish that nobody could read!"
Then the Summer Boarder went out into the garden and faced a big Moral Problem.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CHIEF MAGISTRATE
I
I suppose there never was a man in the world who was as full of pride as Abraham Kellet was on the morning of the day which was to see him made Mayor of Sicaster. That particular 9th of November, as I remember very well, was more than usually dismal and foggy—there were thick mists lying all over the lowlands and curling up the hill-sides as I drove into the town to take part in the proceeding of the day (for I was an old school-fellow of Abraham's, and he had graciously invited me to witness his election), but I warrant that to his worship-to-be no July day ever seemed so glorious nor no May-day sun ever so welcome as the November greyness. All men have their ambitions—Abraham's one ambition since boyhood had been to wear the mayoral chain, the mayoral robes, to sit in the mayoral seat, to be the chief magistrate of his adopted town, to know himself its foremost burgess, to have everybody's cap raised to him, to have himself addressed by high and low as Mr. Mayor. It was a worthy ambition, and he had worked hard for it—now that at last he was within an ace of fulfilling it his pride became apparent to everybody. It was not a vaunting pride, nor the pride which is puffed up, but the pride of a man who knows that he has succeeded. He was a big-framed, broad-countenanced man, Abraham Kellet, who put down a firm foot and showed a portly front, and after it was settled that he was to be the next Mayor of Sicaster his tread was firmer than ever and his front more portly as he trod the cobble-paved streets of the little town. I can see him now—a big, fine figure of a man of not much over fifty, his six feet of height invariably habited in the best broadcloth; his linen as scrupulously white and glossy as he himself was scrupulously shaven; his boots as shining as the expensive diamond ring which he wore on the little finger of his left hand. Decidedly a man to fill a mayoral chair with dignity and fulness, was Abraham Kellet.