everywhere.  In the wide, sunny sitting-room, into which they were ushered by a pleasant-faced maid, low bookcases ran all round the walls, and were not only filled, but heaped with books, the volumes lying in piles along the top.  The centre-table was a magazine-stand, where Saint Nicholas and The Century, The Forum and The Scientific American jostled each other in friendly rivalry.  Mrs. Merryweather sat in a low chair, with her lap full of books, and had some difficulty in rising to receive her visitors.  Her hearty welcome assured them that they had not come a day too soon, as Mrs. Grahame feared.

“My dear lady, no!  I am charmed to see you.  Bell has had such pleasure in making friends with your daughter.  Miss Grahame, I am delighted to see you!” and Mrs. Merryweather held out what she thought was her hand, but Hildegarde shook instead a small morocco volume, and was well content when she saw that it was the “Golden Treasury.”

“Bell has had such pleasure that I have been most anxious to share it, and to know you and your daughter.  Shall we be neighbourly?  I am the most unceremonious person in the world.  Dear me! isn’t there a chair without books on it?  Here, my dear Mrs. Grahame, sit down here, pray!  It is Dr. Johnson himself who makes room for you, and you must excuse the great man for being slow in his movements.”

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—­”