‘The letter has come!  We are to have the house.’

‘And how is Mrs. Christopherson?’

’Better, much better, Heaven be thanked!  She slept almost from the time when you left yesterday afternoon till early this morning.  The letter came by the first post, and I told her—­not the whole truth,’ he added, under his breath.  ’She thinks I am to be allowed to take the books with me; and if you could have seen her smile of contentment.  But they will all be sold and carried away before she knows about it; and when she sees that I don’t care a snap of the fingers!’

He had turned into the sitting-room on the ground floor.  Walking about excitedly, Christopherson gloried in the sacrifice he had made.  Already a letter was despatched to a bookseller, who would buy the whole library as it stood.  But would he not keep a few volumes?  I asked.  Surely there could be no objection to a few shelves of books; and how would he live without them?  At first he declared vehemently that not a volume should be kept—­he never wished to see a book again as long as he lived.  But Mrs. Christopherson?  I urged.  Would she not be glad of something to read now and then?  At this he grew pensive.  We discussed the matter, and it was arranged that a box should be packed with select volumes and taken down into Norfolk together with the rest of their luggage.  Not even Mrs. Keeting could object to this, and I strongly advised him to take her permission for granted.

And so it was done.  By discreet management the piled volumes were stowed in bags, carried downstairs, emptied into a cart, and conveyed away, so quietly that the sick woman was aware of nothing.  In telling me about it, Christopherson crowed as I had never heard him; but methought his eye avoided that part of the floor which had formerly been hidden, and in the course of our conversation he now and then became absent, with head bowed.  Of the joy he felt in his wife’s recovery there could, however, be no doubt.  The crisis through which he had passed had made him, in appearance, a yet older man; when he declared his happiness tears came into his eyes, and his head shook with a senile tremor.

Before they left London, I saw Mrs. Christopherson—­a pale, thin, slightly made woman, who had never been what is called good-looking, but her face, if ever face did so, declared a brave and loyal spirit.  She was not joyous, she was not sad; but in her eyes, as I looked at them again and again, I read the profound thankfulness of one to whom fate has granted her soul’s desire.

HUMPLEBEE

The school was assembled for evening prayers, some threescore boys representing for the most part the well-to-do middle class of a manufacturing county.  At either end of the room glowed a pleasant fire, for it was February and the weather had turned to frost.

Silence reigned, but on all the young faces turned to where the headmaster sat at his desk appeared an unwonted expression, an eager expectancy, as though something out of the familiar routine were about to happen.  When the master’s voice at length sounded, he did not read from the book before him; gravely, slowly, he began to speak of an event which had that day stirred the little community with profound emotion.