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 flour-bags in the rear. Poor Twinkle seemed to have found his load no light one; and this was not surprising, for the butter-boxes proved to be full of weighty books, and the sacks, all but one, whose leanness hid a few old clothes, were crammed with papers.

Roger, humorously growling, brought them all round by degrees into the old kitchen, now homelike and hospitable once more with a good fire of black-pine, for the sweet spring breeze was keen. But it was not upon the fire that the newcomer’s deep-set old eyes fastened themselves with eagerness and brightened as they gazed; it was upon a certain innovation in the room, introduced no later than that very day—some shelves, namely, of plain wood, running along a couple of the walls. He rubbed his veiny, knotted hands together as he looked at them, and before he would so much as glance at the good hot meal Mrs. Callender made haste to bring in, he insisted upon unpacking and bestowing on these shelves his beloved books—his “family,” as he called them with a whimsical smile.

It was a family extremely unlike that other which the old kitchen had known, with fresh, rosy faces and quick limbs; considered, too, as decoration, it could hardly vie with Martin’s pictures; for a sorrier, a more blighted collection of volumes can seldom surely have been seen. The backs of many were broken, others could boast of no richer wrapping than was afforded by a bit of brown paper; and the very handsomest members of all faced the world, or rather the old kitchen, in mouldy coats of dull brown leather, sorely scratched and