And I then noticed the countenance of the younger brother, who was fairer and shorter by a head than Basil, and had the most beautiful eyes imaginable, and a high forehead betokening thoughtfulness. Mr. Rookwood drew his chair further from the table, and conversed in a low voice with Mrs. Ward, touching matters which I ween were of too great import to be lightly treated of. I heard the name of Mr. Felton mentioned in their discourse, and somewhat about the Pope's Bull, in the affixing of which at the Bishop of London's gate he had lent a hand; but my ears were not free to listen to them, for the young gentlemen began to entertain me with divers accounts of the shows in London; which, as they were some years older than myself, who was then no better than a child, though tall of mine age, I took as a great favor, and answered them in the best way I could. Basil spoke mostly of the sights he had seen, and a fight between a lion and three dogs, in which the dogs were victorious; and Hubert of books, which he said, for his part, he had always a care to keep handsome and well bound. "Ay," quoth his brother, "gilding them and stringing them like the prayer-books of girls and gallants, which are carried to church but for their outsides. I do hate a book with clasps, 'tis a trouble to open them." "A trouble thou dost seldom take," quoth Hubert. "Thou art ready enough to unclasp the book of thy inward soul to whosoever will read in it, and thy purse to whosoever begs or borrows of thee; but with such clasps as shut in the various stores of thought which have issued forth from men's minds thou dost not often meddle." "Beshrew me if I do! The best prayer-book I take to be a pair of beads; and the most entertaining reading, the 'Rules for the Hunting of Deer;' which, by what I have heard from Sir Roger Ashlon, my Lord Stafford hath grievously transgressed by assaulting Lord Lyttleton's keepers in Teddesley Haye." "What have you here?" Hubert asked, glancing at Mr. Fox's _Book of Martyrs_, and another which the landlady had left on the table; _A profitable New Year's Gift to all England._ "They are not mine," I answered, "nor such as I do care to read; but this," I said, holding out Mr. Page's gift, which I had in my pocket, "is a rare fund of entertainment and very full of pleasant tales." "But," quoth he, "you should read the _Morte d'Arthur_ and the _Seven Champions of Christendom."_ Which I said I should be glad to do when I had the good chance to meet with them. He said, "My cousin Polly had a store of such pleasant volumes, and would, no doubt, lend them to me. She has such a sharp wit," he added, "that she is ever exercising it on herself or on others; on herself by the bettering of her mind through reading; and on others by such applications, of what she thus acquires as leaves them no chance in discoursing with her but to yield to her superior knowledge."