As he asked the question his eyes strayed from Grace to Philip, and an amused expression came over the little man's face, so that Grace asked:-- "What is so funny in Philip's appearance?" "Nothin'," said Caleb, quickly pretending to arrange the goods on a shelf. "Don't say 'Nothing' in that tantalizing way, when your every feature is saying that there is something." "Out with it, Caleb," said Philip. "I promise that I shan't feel offended." "Well, the fact is, I was thinkin' o' somethin' I overheard you tell your uncle, first time you came here. He asked you what you was goin' to the city for. 'To continue my studies,' says you. 'What studies?' says he. 'Literature an' art,' says you. Then Jethro come pretty nigh to bustin' hisself. After you was gone he borried some cyclopeedy volumes from Doc Taggess, an' in odd moments he opened 'em at long pieces that was headed 'Literature' an' 'Art.' I watched him pretty close, to know when he was through, so I could pump him about 'em, for his sake as well as mine; for I've most generally found that a man ain't sure of what he knows till he has to tell it to somebody else. But Jethro would most generally drop asleep 'long about the second or third page, an' one day he slapped one of the books shut an' hollered, 'Dog-goned nonsense!' Like enough he was wrong about it, though, for afterwards I dipped into the same pieces myself, a little bit at a time, and 'peared to me there was a mighty lot of pleasant things in the subjects, if one could spend his whole life huntin' for 'em." "You're quite right as to the general fact," said Philip, "and also as to the time that may be given to it." "Am, eh? Glad I sized it up so straight. Well, then, I reckon you didn't finish the job in the city, an' that you're still peggin' away at it." Philip looked at Grace, and both laughed as he replied:-- "I don't believe I've opened any book but the Bible in the past month." "I want to know! Then the hundreds of books in your house are about like money that's locked up in the safe instead o' bein' out at interest, or turnin' itself over in some other way, ain't they?" "Quite so." Caleb went into a brown study, and Philip and Grace chatted apart, and laughed--occasionally sighed--over what they had intended to buy and read, when they found themselves well off. Suddenly Caleb emerged from his brown study and said:-- "Ain't them books like a lot of clothes or food that's locked up, doin' no good to their owner, while other folks, round about, are hungry, or shiverin'?" "Caleb," said Philip, after a long frown in which his wife did not join, although distinctly invited, "my practised eye discerns that you think our books, which are about as precious to us as so many children might be, ought to be lent out, to whoever would read them."