Barbara had no haughty pride. She spoke in the same tone to lord and humble workman. She had been the champion of the blacks in her own country, and in England looked lovingly on the gypsies in their little tents on the windy downs.

Hardly had Lestrange and the curate left the library when Barbara entered, noiseless as a moth. Her blue eyes—at times they seemed black, they were so dark blue—settled upon Richard the moment she entered and, resting on him, seemed to lead her up to the table where he was at work.

“What have you done to make Arthur so angry?” she asked as if they had known each other all their lives.

“What I am doing now, miss—making this book last a hundred years longer.”

“But if he doesn’t want you to—the book is his.”

“He will be pleased enough by and by. It’s only that he is afraid I will ruin it.”

“Hadn’t you better leave it then?”

“That would be to ruin it. I have gone too far for that.”

“Why should you want to make it last so long? They are always printing books over again, and a new book is much nicer than an old one.”

“So some people think. But others would rather read a book in its first shape. And then books get so changed by printers and editors, that it is absolutely necessary to have copies of them as they were at first. You see this little book, miss? It doesn’t look like much, does it?”

“It looks miserable—and so dirty!”

“By the time I am done with it, it will be worth fifty, perhaps a hundred pounds—I don’t know exactly. It is a play of Shakespeare’s that was published during his lifetime.”

“But they print better and more correctly now, don’t they?”

“Yes, but as I said, they often change things.”

“How is that?”

“Sometimes they will change a word, thinking it ought to be another. Sometimes they will alter a passage because they do not understand it, putting it all wrong, and throwing aside a great meaning for a small one. The change of a letter may alter the whole idea. But they often do it just by blundering.”

As they continued to talk, Richard told her example after example of exactly such printers’ mistakes—some large, some small. During their conversation, his work scarcely relaxed.

“Why do you spend your time patching up books?” said Barbara.

“Because they are worth patching up, and because I earn my bread by patching them.”

“But you seem to care most for what is inside them.”

“If I didn’t I should never have begun mending, I should have been content binding them.”

Another pause followed.

“What a lot you know!” said Barbara.

“Very little,” answered Richard.

“If you know little, then where does that leave me? I know next to nothing about books.”

“Perhaps ladies don’t need books. I don’t know about ladies.”

“I have never heard a man or a lady talk as you do—as if books were their friends. But books are only books, after all.”