The librarian's heart sank, and her assistant put her head on her arms and cried. Thomas sat sadly on his little porch, his unlighted pipe in his mouth. The library seemed strangely empty.
The little Meadows girl brought them the news the next morning.
"Jimmy's dead," she said abruptly. "He got it from a book up at the Vanderhoof's. His aunt feels awful bad. It was a libr'y book. They say he held it all the time."
The librarian put away the book in her hand, envying the younger woman her facile tears. She was not imaginative, but she realised dimly for a moment that this little boy had known more of books, had got more from them, than she, with all her catalogues.
They sat together, she, Miss Mather, and Thomas, a strange trio, at the simple funeral service in the church nearby. So far as daily living went, they were as near to him as the aunt who cared for him.
Coming back to the library, they lingered awhile in the reading-room, trying to realise that it was all over, and that that little, quick tapping would never be heard again among the books. At last Thomas spoke:
"It don't seem right," he said thickly, "it don't seem right nor fair. Here he was, doting on that book so, tugging it round, just living on it, you might say, and it turned on him and killed him. Gave it up, and a sacrifice it was, too—I know—and as a reward, it killed him. Went back to get it, brought it home, took it to bed—and it killed him. It's like those things he'd tell me out of it—they all died; seemingly without any reason, the gods would go back on 'em, and they'd die. He's often read it out to me."
"It will be lovely to have that Children's-room memorial," said Miss Mather, softly, "with all the books and pictures and the little chairs. It was beautiful in Mrs. Vanderhoof, I think. It wasn't her fault. I wish—I wish we'd had a little chair in there for Jimmy."
The librarian got up abruptly and moved around among the magazines, a mist before her eyes. Only now did she realise how she had grown to love him.