With a merry smile, she offered the chair from which she had just removed a huge folio dictionary. Hildegarde found an ottoman which she could easily share with a volume of Punch, and Mrs. Merryweather beamed at them over her spectacles, and said again that she was delighted to see them.
"We are getting the books to rights gradually," she said, "but it takes time, as you see. I have to do this myself, with Bell's help. She will be down in a moment, my dear. We have established an overflow bookcase in a cupboard upstairs, and she has just gone up with a load. Ah! here she is. Bell, my dear, Mrs. and Miss Grahame. So kind of them to come and see us!"
Bell shook hands warmly, her frank, pleasant face shining with good-will. "I am so glad to see you!" she cried, sitting down by Hildegarde on a pile of Punches. "I hoped you would come to-day, even if the books are not in order yet. They are so dear, the books; they are part of the family, and we want to be sure that they have places they like. I suppose Punch ought by rights to go with people of his own sort—if there is anybody!—but one wants him close at hand, don't you think so? where one can take him up any time,—when it rains, or when things bother one. Do you remember that Leech picture?" and they babbled of Punch, their beloved, for ten minutes, and liked each other better at every one of the ten.
"Bell, I want Mrs. and Miss Grahame to see our other children," said Mrs. Merryweather, presently. "Where is Toots, and where are the boys?"
"Toots is upstairs, poor lamb!" Bell replied. "When Mary came to tell me of our visitors' arrival I was just putting away Sibbes's 'Soul's Conflict,' and various other dreadful persons whom you would not let me burn; so I dumped them in Toots's arms, and ran off and left her. Being a ''bedient old soul,' she is probably standing just where I left her. I will go—"
But at this moment Toots appeared,—a girl of fifteen, tall, shy and blushing, and was introduced as "my daughter Gertrude." She confessed, on interrogation, that she had dropped Sibbes's "Soul's Conflict" out of the window, and was on her way to pick it up.
"Why didn't you drop it down the well?" asked her sister. "It is so dry, I am sure a wetting would do it good!"
"Sit down, my dear!" said Mrs. Merryweather, comfortably. "One of the boys is sure to be about, and will bring in the book. Sibbes IS a little dry, Bell, but very sound writing, much sounder than a good deal of the controversial writing of—bless me! what's that?"
Something resembling a human wheel had revolved swiftly past the window, emitting unearthly cries.
Hildegarde blushed and hesitated. "I—I think it was your brother
Obadiah," she said to Bell.