Page:Daskam Bacon--Whom the gods destroy.djvu/181

 worthy of his hire, and Miss Watkins, vexed beyond the necessity of the case, labelled Fiction angrily, wondering why such a town as this needed a library, anyway.

Two little old ladies, plump and deprecatory, entered in a swish of fresh, cambric morning-dresses. One of them fumbled in her black-silk bag for a book, and leaning on the little gate, coughed lightly to attract the assistant's attention.

"Yes, indeed. Miss Mather, a lovely day. Sister and I enjoyed this very much. I don't know about what we'll take, exactly; it's so hard to tell. I always look and look, and the more I look the more anxious I get. It always seems as if everything was going to be too long, or else we've read it. You see we read a good deal. I wonder—do you know where the little boy is?"

Miss Mather smiled triumphantly. "You'll have to ask Miss Watkins," she said.

"The new librarian, my dear? Oh, I hardly like to disturb her. They say she's very strict. My cousin told me she charged her nine cents for a