Mr. Tipping is at home?" said Henry. "I will wait till he is
disengaged. I will make myself comfortable in the kitchen," (Henry knew
his way about at Aunt Tipping's, and remembered there was only one front
parlour) adding, with something of pride, "I'm Mrs. Tipping's nephew,
you know."

Presently the torture in the front parlour was at an end; and, as Mr.
Tipping was about to turn upstairs to the little back room where he
mended his shoes, Henry emerged upon him from the kitchen. They had had
some talks on books and the general misgovernment of the universe,--for
Mr. Tipping really was something of an "atheist,"--on Henry's occasional
visits, and were no strangers to each other.

"Why, Henry, lad, whoever expected to see you! Your aunt's out at
present; but she'll be back soon. Come into the parlour."

"If you don't mind, Uncle Tipping, I'd rather come upstairs with you. I
love the smell of the leather and the sight of all those sharp little
knives, and the black, shiny 'dubbin,' do you call it? And we can have a
talk about books till aunt comes home."

"All right, lad. But it's a dusty place, and there's hardly a corner to
sit down in."

So up they went to a little room where, in a chaos of boots mended on
one hand, and boots to mend on the other, sheets of leather lying about,
in one corner a great tubfull of water in which the leather was
soaked,--an old boyish fascination of Henry's,--Mr. Tipping spent the
greater part of his days. He sat on a low bench near a window, along
which ran a broad sill full of tools. On this, too, lay an opened book,
into which Mr. Tipping would dip now and again, when he could safely
leave the boot he was engaged upon to the mechanical skill of his hands.
At one end of the tool-shelf was a small collection of books, a dozen or
so shabby volumes, though these were far from constituting Mr. Tipping's
complete library.

Mr. Tipping belonged to that pathetic army of book-lovers who subsist on
the refuse of the stalls, which he hunted not for rare editions, but for
the sheer bread of life, or rather the stale crusts of knowledge. His
tastes were not literary in the special sense of the word. For
belles-lettres he had no fancy, and fine passages, except in so far as
they were controversial, left him cold. His mind was primarily
scientific, secondarily philosophic, and occasionally historic. Travels
and books of physical science were the finds for which, mainly, he
rummaged the stalls.