surveyed the disordered room
with discontented eyes. "Been looking them over to see what you can
leave behind or burn up, haven't you? And you can't make up your mind
to part with one of them. I know pretty well how _that_ is. The books
ain't disturbed yet, thank goodness! Are you going to take Parson
Grantly's offer, and let him have some of them?"

Mrs Inglis shook her head.

"Perhaps I ought," said she. "And yet I cannot make up my mind to do
it."

"No! of course, not! Not to him, anyhow! Do you suppose he'd ever read
them? No! He only wants them to set up on his shelf to look at. If
they've got to go, let them go to some one that'll get the good of them,
for goodness sake! Well! There! I believe I'm getting profane about
it!" said Miss Bethia catching the look of astonishment on David's face.
"But what I want to say is, What in all the world should you want to go
and break it up for? There ain't many libraries like that in this part
of the world."

And, indeed, there was not. The only point at which Mr Inglis had
painfully felt his poverty, was his library. He was a lover of books,
and had the desire, which is like a fire in the bones of the earnest
student, to get possession of the best books of the time as they came
from the press. All his economy in other things had reference to this.
Any overplus at the year's end, any unexpected addition to their means,
sooner or later found its way into the booksellers' hands. But neither
overplus nor unexpected addition were of frequent occurrence in the
family history of the Inglises; and from among the best of the
booksellers' treasures only the very best found their way to the
minister's study except as transitory visitors. Still, in the course of
years, a good many of these had been gathered, and he had, besides,
inherited a valuable library, as far as it went, both in theology and in
general literature; and once or twice, in the course of his life, it had
been his happy fortune to have to thank some good rich man for a gift of
books better than gold. So Miss Bethia was right in saying that there
were in the country few libraries like the one on which she stood gazing
with regretful admiration.

"_I_ can't make it seem right to do it," continued she gravely. "Just
think of the book he thought so much of lying round on common folks'
shelves and tables? Why! he used to touch the very outsides of them as
if they felt good to his hands."

"I re