"Is there any love in it?" asked Mary Ellen.
"My daughter," broke in Mrs. Maidment, "likes books with love matters and lords and ladies in 'em—she reads pieces of 'em to me at nights."
"That, ma'am, is the only sort I carry," said the book-proprietor. "Now, miss, just let me show you——"
In the end Mary Ellen purchased one tale which dealt with much love and many lords and ladies, and another which the seller described as a pious work with a strong love interest, and recommended highly for Sunday reading. She also bought Mrs. Hemans, because on turning over her pages she saw several lines which she thought were pretty. And while she went up-stairs to fetch her purse Mrs. Maidment asked the stranger inside to drink a jug of ale. One can imagine his sharp glance round that old farmhouse kitchen, with its lovely old oak furniture, its shining brass and pewter, its old delf-ware....
"You don't happen to have any old books that you want to clear out of the way, do you, ma'am?" he said, when he had been paid, and was drinking his ale. "I buy anything like that—there's lots of people glad to get rid of them. I've a sack full of 'em now under the cart there. Of course, they're worth nothing but waste paper price. That's what I have to sell them at, ma'am."
"Why, there's some old books in that chest there," said Mrs. Maidment, pointing to an old chest in the deep window-seat. "I'm sure I've oft said we'd burn 'em, for they're that old and printed so queer that nobody can read 'em. Let him look at 'em, Mary Ellen."
What treasures were they that the wandering merchant's knowing eyes gazed upon? He gazed upon them for some time, according to the eye-witnesses, before he spoke, examining each book with great care.
"Aye, well, ma'am," he said at last. "Of course, as you say, nobody could read them now-a-days. I'll tell you what—I'll give miss here three new books out of the cart for them, and you can pick for yourself, miss!"
Mary Ellen exclaimed joyfully—and the old books went into a sack.
It was not until the next year that a Summer Boarder from London took up temporary quarters at Low Meadow Farm. According to the account which Mrs. Maidment gave to her gossips of him he was a very quiet gentleman who, when he wasn't rambling about the fields and by the streams, was reading in the garden, and when he wasn't reading in the garden was writing in the parlour. And the books he had brought with him, she said, were more than the parson had.