The other member of the staff is Mr. Joshua Glendinning, who sits in a room in the basement for a week every month preparing Mr. Bemerton's catalogue. Mr. Glendinning is a British Museum Reading-Room hack who gets all kinds of odd jobs to keep him going, from copying sermons (on Fridays and Saturdays) to collating quoted passages in proofs and now and then correcting the Greek and Latin of a more fortunate but less scholarly literary man. He once, I learn, was not only a schoolmaster but had a flourishing school of his own; but the devil of intemperance, whose wiles for the overthrow of Christian reputations are permitted to conquer so easily, was too much for him, and he gradually and steadily lost all. The gentlest, simplest creature at heart, he now lives on a few pence a day in a Rowton House, wishes no man ill, save perhaps himself, carries a _Times_ dated somewhen in 1893 protruding negligently from his pocket as if it were to-day's and he was a gentleman on his way to his stockbroker's (the harmless melancholy deception!) and sits every evening in the same corner of the same saloon bar tearfully imbibing gin and water and laying plans for the new career which will begin on the morrow. "Then you don't want to sell me the Chinese book again?" said Mr. Bemerton, after we had exchanged a few generalities. "No," I said, "certainly not;" and from Miss Wagstaff's table I heard what sounded like a sarcastic sniff deprecative of her uncle's insanity in suggesting such a transaction. "Mrs. Duckie," said Mr. Bemerton, "tells me that you sleep badly. If there are any books here that you would like to keep by your bed, you are welcome to them. The only thing is, we should like to have them back in the morning." (So Naomi was among the prophetesses after all!) I accepted the offer cheerfully and promised that the daily restoration should be my first thought. "For night reading," said Mr. Bemerton, "it was Mr. Lecky's theory--Mr. Lecky often came in--that books should be very nearly dull. But it's not very easy to find exactly the right thing." "What would you call a nearly dull book?" I asked. He looked round for awhile. "This," he said at last, and he brought me a volume of Nichols' _Literary Anecdotes_. "It's good and sound, and now and then it's amusing, but it's often very small beer. There isn't a better bed book--or wouldn't be if only it was a little lighter to hold. The curious thing about it is that it is the one case known to me of an original book the best of which is all in the footnotes. You take a volume and try." The world is very small; the mistake is, of course, ever to have thought it large. While Mr. Bemerton was talking to another customer, and I was at his shelves making my hands very grubby (as only old books can) and my eyes very glad (as old books can almost more surely than anything else), I noticed the address on a parcel which Ern had just finished packing--Miss Gold, The Cedars, Esher.