By a devious walk of half a mile we reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House.  We arrived amid a florid description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and interpreted by Th’ Ole Man.  My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he did not hesitate to recommend them; and so we passed through the wide-open gates and up the stone walk to the entrance of Kelmscott House.  On the threshold we met F.S.  Ellis and Emery Walker, who addressed my companion as “Tom.”  I knew Mr. Ellis slightly, and also had met Mr. Walker, who works Rembrandt miracles with a camera.

Mr. Ellis was deep in seeing the famous “Chaucer” through the press, and Mr. Walker had a print to show, so we turned aside, passed a great pile of paper in crates that cluttered the hallway, and entered the library.  There, leaning over the long, oaken table, in shirt-sleeves, was the master.  Who could mistake that great, shaggy head, the tangled beard, and frank, open-eyed look of boyish animation?

The man was sixty and more, but there was no appearance of age in eye, complexion, form or gesture—­only the whitened hair!  He greeted me as if we had always known each other, and Ellis and piles of Chaucer proof led straight to old Professor Child of Harvard, whose work Ellis criticized and Morris upheld.  They fell into a hot argument, which was even continued as we walked across the street to the Doves Bindery.

The Doves Bindery, as all good men know, is managed by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, who married one of the two daughters of Richard Cobden of Corn-Law fame.

Just why Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer, should have borrowed his wife’s maiden name and made it legally a part of his own, I do not know.  Anyway, I quite like the idea of linking one’s name with that of the woman one loves, especially when it has been so honored by the possessor as the name of Cobden.

Cobden-Sanderson caught the rage for beauty from William Morris, and began to bind books for his own pleasure.  Morris contended that any man who could bind books as beautifully as Cobden-Sanderson should not waste his time with law.  Cobden-Sanderson talked it over with his wife, and she being a most sensible woman, agreed with William Morris.

So Cobden-Sanderson, acting on Th’ Ole Man’s suggestion, rented the quaint and curious mansion next door to the old house occupied by the Kelmscott Press, and went to work binding books.

When we were once inside the Bindery, the Chaucerian argument between Mr. Ellis and Th’ Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson.  I could not get the drift of it exactly—­it seemed to be the continuation of some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something.  Anyway, Th’ Ole Man silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries—­all of which will be better understood when I explain that Th’ Ole Man was large in stature, bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small, red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.