Mark turned away from the window and tried to think of some game that could be played in the dining-room.  But it was not a room that fostered the imagination.  The carpet was so much worn that the pattern was now scarcely visible and, looked one at it never so long and intently, it was impossible to give it an inner life of its own that gradually revealed itself to the fanciful observer.  The sideboard had nothing on it except a dirty cloth, a bottle of harvest burgundy, and half a dozen forks and spoons.  The cupboards on either side contained nothing edible except salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, and oil.  There was a plain deal table without a drawer and without any interesting screws and levers to make it grow smaller or larger at the will of the creature who sat beneath it.  The eight chairs were just chairs; the wallpaper was like the inside of the bath, but alas, without the water; of the two pictures, the one over the mantelpiece was a steel-engraving of the Good Shepherd and the one over the sideboard was an oleograph of the Sacred Heart.  Mark knew every fly speck on their glasses, every discoloration of their margins.  While he was sighing over the sterility of the room, he heard the door of his father’s study open, and his father and Mr. Astill do down the passage, both of them still talking unceasingly.  Presently the front door slammed, and Mark watched them walk away in the direction of the new church.  Here was an opportunity to go into his father’s study and look at some of the books.  Mark never went in when his father was there, because once his mother had said to his father: 

“Why don’t you have Mark to sit with you?”

And his father had answered doubtfully: 

“Mark?  Oh yes, he can come.  But I hope he’ll keep quiet, because I shall be rather busy.”

Mark had felt a kind of hostility in his father’s manner which had chilled him; and after that, whenever his mother used to suggest his going to sit quietly in the study, he had always made some excuse not to go.  But if his father was out he used to like going in, because there were always books lying about that were interesting to look at, and the smell of tobacco smoke and leather bindings was grateful to the senses.  The room smelt even more strongly than usual of tobacco smoke this afternoon, and Mark inhaled the air with relish while he debated which of the many volumes he should pore over.  There was a large Bible with pictures of palm-trees and camels and long-bearded patriarchs surrounded by flocks of sheep, pictures of women with handkerchiefs over their mouths drawing water from wells, of Daniel in the den of lions and of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace.  The frontispiece was a coloured picture of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden surrounded by amiable lions, benevolent tigers, ingratiating bears and leopards and wolves.  But more interesting than the pictures were some pages at the beginning on which, in oval spaces framed in leaves and flowers,