Yes, certainly, all things considered, Mr. Wendover made himself agreeable. He ate his boiled mutton and drank his _ordinaire_ like a man, and when the meal was over, and he and Robert had withdrawn into the study, he gave an emphatic word of praise to the coffee which Catherine’s house-wifely care sent after them, and accepting a cigar, he sank into the arm-chair by the fire and spread a bony hand to the blaze, as if he had been at home in that particular corner for months. Robert, sitting opposite to him and watching his guest’s eyes travel round the room, with its medicine shelves, its rods and nets, and preparations of uncanny beasts, its parish litter, and its teeming bookcases, felt that the Mile End matter was turning out oddly indeed. ‘I have packed you a case of books, Mr. Elsmere,’ said the Squire, after a puff or two at his cigar. ‘How have you got on without that collection of Councils?’ He smiled a little awkwardly. It was one of the books Robert had sent back. Robert flushed. He did not want the Squire to regard him as wholly dependent on Murewell. ‘I bought it,’ he said, rather shortly. ‘I have ruined myself in books lately, and the London Library too supplies me really wonderfully well.’ ‘Are these your books?’ The Squire got up to look at them. ‘Hum, not at all bad for a beginning. I have sent you so and so,’ and he named one or two costly folios that Robert had long pined for in vain. The Rector’s eyes glistened. ‘That was very good of you,’ he said simply, ‘They will be most welcome.’ ‘And now, how much _time_,’ said the other, settling himself again to his cigar, his thin legs crossed over each other, and his great head sunk into his shoulders, ‘how much time do you give to this work?’ ‘Generally the mornings--not always. A man with twelve hundred souls to look after, you know, Mr. Wendover,’ said Elsmere, with a bright, half defiant accent, ‘can’t make grubbing among the Franks his main business.’ The Squire said nothing, and smoked on. Robert gathered that his companion thought his chances of doing anything worth mentioning very small. ‘Oh no,’ he said, following out his own, thought with a shake of his curly hair; ‘of course I shall never do very much. But if I don’t, it won’t be for want of knowing what the scholar’s ideal is.’ And he lifted his hand with a smile toward the Squire’s book on ‘English Culture,’ which stood in the book-case just above him. The Squire, following the gesture, smiled too. It was a faint, slight illumining, but it changed the face agreeably. Robert began to ask questions about the book, about the pictures contained in it of foreign life and foreign universities. The Squire consented to be drawn out, and presently was talking at his very best.