t on a savage frown, as he was ushered
into the room, by way of counteracting the sweet innocence. A glass
opposite suddenly revealed to its owner the smooth rosy-brown visage,
screwed up in a compound expression. That expression changed so swiftly
to sheer surprise, that a burst of involuntary laughter was the result.
A deep flush, and silence, followed, as the urchin looked with some
confusion round the room to see if he had been observed or overheard,
and a sense of relief came as he found that he was alone. No one had
seen or heard him except some of the Dotropy ancestors who had "come
over" with the Conqueror, and who gazed sternly from the walls. For,
you see, being a family of note, the dining-room could not hold all the
ancestors, so that some of them had to be accommodated in the library.

That glance round had a powerful effect on the mind of the fisher-boy,
so powerful indeed that all thought of self vanished, for he found
himself for the first time, in a room the like of which he had never
seen, or heard, or dreamed of.

He knew, of course, that there were libraries in Yarmouth, and was aware
that they had something to do with books, but he had never seen a
collection on a large scale, and, up to that time, had no particular
curiosity about books.

Indeed, if truth must be told, Billy hated books, because the only point
in regard to which he and his mother had ever differed was a book! A
tattered, ragged, much-soiled book it was, with big letters at the
beginning, simple arrangements of letters in the middle, and maddening
compounds of them towards the end. Earnestly, patiently, lovingly, yet
perseveringly, had Mrs Bright tried to drill the contents of that book
into Billy's unwilling brain, but with little success, for, albeit a
willing and obliging child, there was a limit to his powers of
comprehension, and a tendency in his young mind to hold in contempt what
he did not understand.

One day a somewhat pedantic visitor told Billy that he would never be a
great man if he did not try to understand the book in question--to
thoroughly digest it.

"You hear what the gentleman says, Billy, you dirty little gurnet," said
David Bright on that occasion, "you've got to di-gest it, my lad, to
di-gest it."

"Yes, father," said Billy, with a finger in his mouth and his eyes on
the visitor.

The boy's mind was inquisitive and ingenious. He pestered his father,
after the visitor had gone, for an explanat