Mr. Tipping belonged to that pathetic army of book-lovers who subsist on the refuse of the stalls, which he hunted not for rare editions, but for the sheer bread of life, or rather the stale crusts of knowledge.  His tastes were not literary in the special sense of the word.  For belles-lettres he had no fancy, and fine passages, except in so far as they were controversial, left him cold.  His mind was primarily scientific, secondarily philosophic, and occasionally historic.  Travels and books of physical science were the finds for which, mainly, he rummaged the stalls.  At the moment his pet study was astronomy; and a curious apparatus in one of the corners, which Henry had noticed as he entered, was his sad attempt to rig up a telescope for himself.

“It’s not so bad as it looks,” he said, pointing it out; “but then,” he added, with a smile half sad and half humorous, “there are not many stars to be seen from Tichborne Street.”

It was a touching characteristic of the type of bookman to which Mr. Tipping belonged, that the astronomy from which he was reading by no means embodied the latest discoveries.  In fact, it narrowly escaped being eighteenth-century science, for it was dated very early in the eighteen hundreds.  But an astronomy was an astronomy to Mr. Tipping; and had Copernicus been born late enough, he would most certainly have imbibed Ptolemaic doctrines with grateful unsuspicion.  Indeed, had it been put to him:  “This astronomy after Copernicus at half-a-crown, and this after Ptolemy for sixpence,” his means alone would have left him no choice.  It is so the old clothes of the mind, like the old clothes of the body,—­superseded science, forgotten philosophy,—­find a market, and a book remains a book, with the power of comforting or diverting some indigent, poor soul, so long as the stitching holds it together.

Presently there was a knock at the front door.

“There’s your aunt,” said Mr. Tipping; and, as the door opened, the little maid-of-all-work was to be heard whispering her mistress that a young gentleman who said he was her nephew had come and was upstairs with “the master.”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Tipping, immediately starting upstairs towards the open door of the cobblery.

Henry was standing on the threshold, and the warm-hearted little woman gave him a hearty hug of welcome.

“Well, I am glad to see you!  And how are they all at home?” and she ran over the list, name for name.  “We mustn’t forget your father.  But he’s a hard ’un and no mistake,” said the aunt, putting on a mimic expression of severity.

“He’s an upright man, is James Mesurier,” said Mr. Tipping, rather severely.

“Oh, yes, yes; we know that, crosspatch.  I’m saying nothing against him.  He’s good at heart, I know; but he’s a little hard on the surface—­like some other folks I know,” making a face at her husband.  “But you must come down and talk to me a bit, lad; you’ll have had enough of him and his old books.  You never saw the like of him!  Here he sits day after day over his musty books, and you can hardly get him away for his meals.  He’s no company for any one.”