Mrs. Middleton did not appear at lunch and everything was so pleasant that Elsie's spirits rose until she was almost gay. She talked more than she had done since she came--almost more than she had ever done before until she met Elsie Moss--and she was at once gratified and appalled to perceive that she was reminding Mr. Middleton of his sister. Of course, his real niece would remind him still more, but Elsie knew that the wrench to his feelings before she should be established in the parsonage would be severe, even terrible. If only Mrs. Middleton kept her room continually! And yet, he might not like that. The library was only the more engaging that day. Mattie Howe came in early and they went through a number of shelves in the children's department together in selecting her book. Then Elsie took the little girl in her lap--in a curiously easy fashion--and they looked at the colored pictures in a large book that did not circulate until some one else came in and claimed the librarian's attention. A roguish-looking boy with a tousled head entered, stared at Elsie in amazement, and went abruptly out. Returning a little later with shining face and wet, parted hair, as he asked at the desk for a book, he spread out a pair of very clean hands in a manner intended to be nonchalant. He was ready and eager to talk and very amusing. Before Elsie got through with him, she had assured him that she meant to read "Robinson Crusoe" within the next fortnight. Then a lad apparently of about her own age, a high-school boy, shy, but with very gentle manners, who started as if to retreat as he saw her, gathered his courage, returned his book, and stood there undecided. "Do you want another book?" Elsie asked. "Have you got anything about Edison?" he asked. "I've got to write a composition about electricity, and I thought I might start with him." Elsie consulted the catalogue, but greatly to her disappointment was unable to find anything. The boy had such nice manners and such honest, deep-set eyes that she wanted to help him. "You might start with Benjamin Franklin," she suggested, not very confidently. "Sure!" he returned, smiling frankly. She got him a biography of Franklin, and he sat down at one of the tables with note-book and pencil and was soon deep in it. There were a number of references to Franklin in the catalogue, and as Elsie went back to it to see if she might have made a better choice, she saw that one referred to the proper volume of a "Dictionary of American Scientists." It came to her that she might discover Edison in the same place. She was pleased to find several pages of a recent volume of the work devoted to that inventor. She carried it to the boy and pointed out the pages with a feeling of satisfaction almost like triumph.