“Here you are,” she said, handing him the coin with a not altogether successful attempt at an indulgent smile. “You have n’t bought anything for a fortnight. Go in and pay for it, and then come home to dinner, do!”
“Good morning, Mr. Baxter! How's the library this morning?”
The druggist was standing in his doorway, with a facetious twinkle in his eye. Evidently Mr. Baxter's library was an accepted target for local humour.
Mr. Baxter took no notice, but disappeared into the bookshop. Mr. Pettigrew handed me my bottle.
“One of our characters, that old fellow,” he said, with that little air of civic pride which marks the country-townsman booming local stock. “Quite a poor man, but possesses an extensive library—quite extensive. His learning is at the service of his fellow citizens. He likes to be called The Oracle. Supposing you want to know something about Shakespeare, or Julius Cæsar, or Wireless Telegraphy, or Patagonia, you go to Baxter. You press the button and he does the rest! Lives a bit in the clouds, of course; and I would n’t go so far as to say that his information is always infallible. In fact”—Mr. Pettigrew tapped his forehead significantly—“his upper storey—”
“Who made up a wrong prescription, and poisoned a baby?” demanded an acid voice immediately under the humourist's left elbow. He swung round. The small girl, crimson with wrath, but with her emotions well under control, stood gazing dispassionately before her, apparently talking to herself.
“Whose wife gave a party,” she continued—“and nobody came? Whose daughter wants to marry the curate—and he won’t? Who—”
“That’ll do,” announced Mr. Pettigrew, shortly, and retired in disorder into his shop. Simultaneously The Oracle emerged from the bookshop with Robert Southey under his arm, and with a stately inclination in my direction departed down the street, under the grim and defiant escort of his infant guardian.
II
One morning about three months later, my butler, footman, valet-de-chambre, chauffeur, and general supervisor, McAndrew, thrust his head round the dining-room door as I sat at breakfast and announced:
“There’s a wee body in the hall.”
I have known McAndrew for seven years now, and I understand his vernacular. We met in that great rendezvous of all time, the Western Front, on a day when I took command of a Field Ambulance in which McAndrew was functioning as a stretcher bearer. When our unit was demobilized in Nineteen Nineteen, McAndrew came before me and announced that he had relinquished all intention of resuming his former profession of “jiner” in his native Dumbarton, and desired henceforth to serve me in the capacity mentioned above for the joint term of our natural lives. I took him on, and he does very well. He has his own ideas about how to wait at table, and his methods with unauthenticated callers are apt to be arbitrary; but he is clean and honest, and—well, he wears a vertical gold stripe on his left sleeve and three ribbons just above his watch-pocket. That is enough for me.
As I say, his vernacular now contains no mysteries for me. So when he made the alarming announcement just mentioned I realized at once that no case of infant mortality had occurred on my premises, but that a person of small stature desired an interview.
“Man or woman?” I asked.
“A lassie.”
“A patient?”
“I couldna say: she wouldna tell me,” replied McAndrew, not without bitterness.
“Bring her in,” I said. Forthwith the Ancient Mariner was ushered into my presence.
“Grampa’s in bed with one of his legs again,” she announced.
I forbore to ask an obvious and fatuous question, and nodded.
“Dr. Wiseman used to attend him,” continued my visitor; “but he did n’t charge him very much–next to nothink, almost,” she added, with a shade of anxiety.
“Is your grandfather insured, or on any club?” I asked. “If so, the panel doctor—”
“No, he is n’t insured, or anything. He's a gentleman. He has a liberry.”
Toujours the Liberry! “Where does he live?” I inquired.
“Twenty-One, The Common. When can you come?”
“Eleven o’clock.
“All right. Don't be earlier than that: I have the room to straighten.”
The Home of The Oracle proved to be one of a row—something between a villa and a cottage. The door was opened by my sharp-featured little friend.
“Walk in,” she said—“and wipe your boots.”
Mr. Baxter was in bed in the front parlour. As I had suspected, he had both legs with him—but one of these was inflamed and swollen.
“I always bring him in here when he's poorly,” explained the granddaughter (whose name I discovered later to be Ada Weeks), “because he likes to be with his old books.” She favoured her patient with an affectionate glare. “He’s half silly about them.”
I attended to the invalid's immediate wants, and then overhauled him generally. He was not what an insurance agent would have termed “a good life.” After that, I was introduced to the library, which occupied the wall opposite to the bed. It consisted of a couple of mahogany bookcases, of solid Victorian workmanship, with locked glass doors lined with faded green silk. Ada Weeks produced a key from under her grandfather's pillow and unlocked one of the doors, revealing the books. They were all neatly covered in brown paper. There were no titles on the backs, but each book bore a number, in sprawling, irregular figures.
“There, sir!” announced my patient, with simple pride. “There you behold the accumulated wealth of a man who is just as wealthy as he wishes to be!”
“Rats!” remarked a sharp voice from the recesses of the library; but the old gentleman appeared not to hear.
“It dates from the lamented death of the late Archdeacon. There are a hundred and seventy-nine volumes in all. The little Southey is the last arrival. Show it to us, Ada.”
Miss Weeks extracted Volume One Hundred and Seventy-Nine from the lowest shelf, and handed it to the old man. He turned over the pages lovingly.
“Here is the passage which made us acquainted, sir,” he said. “A delightful thing.” He produced spectacles from somewhere in the bed, adjusted them, and read:
“My days among the Dead are passed:
Around me I behold
(Where'er these casual eyes are cast)
The mighty minds of old:
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom—With whom—”
He faltered.
“ ‘With whom I converse day by day,’ ” said Ada Weeks in a matter-of-fact voice. “Don’t strain your eyes.”
“You are right, my dear,” admitted Mr. Baxter, laying down the book. “The type is somewhat small. But this little poem is strangely suggestive of my own condition. It is called ‘The Scholar'—just about an old man living in the past among his books. I have read it to myself many a time since last I saw you, sir. Put it back, Ada; and show the Doctor an older friend. Something out of the late Archdeacon's library—say Number Fourteen.”
Miss Ada pulled down the volume indicated, blew viciously upon the top edges, and handed it to me. It proved to be part of an