The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the young ladies had scattered to their homes.  Among the graduates of the year were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had now returned to their homes in Arrowhead Village.  They were both glad to rest after the long final examinations and the exercises of the closing day, in which each of them had borne a conspicuous part.  It was a pleasant life they led in the village, which was lively enough at this season.  Walking, riding, driving, boating, visits to the Library, meetings of the Pansophian Society, hops, and picnics made the time pass very cheerfully, and soon showed their restoring influences.  The Terror’s large eyes did not wear the dull, glazed look by which they had too often betrayed the after effects of over-excitement of the strong and active brain behind them.  The Wonder gained a fresher bloom, and looked full enough of life to radiate vitality into a statue of ice.  They had a boat of their own, in which they passed many delightful hours on the lake, rowing, drifting, reading, telling of what had been, dreaming of what might be.

The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and visited often by strangers.  The old Librarian was a peculiar character, as these officials are apt to be.  They have a curious kind of knowledge, sometimes immense in its way.  They know the backs of books, their title-pages, their popularity or want of it, the class of readers who call for particular works, the value of different editions, and a good deal besides.  Their minds catch up hints from all manner of works on all kinds of subjects.  They will give a visitor a fact and a reference which they are surprised to find they remember and which the visitor might have hunted for a year.  Every good librarian, every private book-owner, who has grown into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to every bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book.  These nerves get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do not like to have a volume meddled with any more than they would like to have their naked eyes handled.  They come to feel at last that the books of a great collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own organization.  The old Librarian was getting a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them.  Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,—­or her hands, for there were more readers among the wives and—­daughters, and especially among the aunts, than there were among their male relatives.  The old Librarian knew the books, but the books seemed to know the young assistant; so it looked, at least, to the impatient young people who wanted their services.