to them; but, grasped by them, drew back for a moment,
scanning him before she suffered herself to be kissed.

"My, what a dear old dress! . . . Daddy, you _are_ a dude!"

CHAPTER V.

BROTHER COPAS ON RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE.

"Ah, good evening, Mr. Simeon!"

In the British Isles--search them all over--you will discover no more
agreeable institution of its kind than the Venables Free Library,
Merchester; which, by the way, you are on no account to confuse with
the Free Public Library attached to the Shire Hall. In the latter
you may study the newspapers with all the latest financial, police
and betting news, or borrow all the newest novels--even this novel
which I am writing, should the Library Sub-Committee of the Town
Council (an austerely moral body) allow it to pass. In the Venables
Library the books are mostly mellowed by age, even when naughtiest
(it contains a whole roomful of Restoration Plays, an unmatched
collection), and no newspapers are admitted, unless you count the
monthly and quarterly reviews, of which _The Hibbert Journal_ is the
newest-fangled. By consequence the Venables Library, though open to
all men without payment, has few frequenters; "which," says Brother
Copas, "is just as it should be."

But not even public neglect will account for the peculiar charm of
the Venables Library. That comes of the building it inhabits:
anciently a town house of the Marquesses of Merchester, abandoned
at the close of the great Civil War, and by them never again
inhabited, but maintained with all its old furniture, and from time
to time patched up against age and weather--happily not restored.
When, early in the last century, the seventh Marquess of Merchester
very handsomely made it over to a body of trustees, to house a
collection of books bequeathed to the public by old Dean Venables,
Merchester's most scholarly historian, it was with a stipulation that
the amenities of the house should be as little as possible disturbed.
The beds, to be sure, were removed from the upper rooms, and the old
carpets from the staircase; and the walls, upstairs and down, lined
with bookcases. But a great deal of the old furniture remains; and,
wandering at will from one room to another, you look forth through
latticed panes upon a garth fenced off from the street with railings
of twisted iron-work and overspread by a gigantic mulberry-tree, the
boughs of which in summer, if you are wise enough to choose a
window-seat,