And as Hugh John does it, this is not hypocritical. He couldn't be that if he tried. He has just thought it out, and now makes it work with the greatest coolness in the world. It is his system. And he says every boy is a fool who gives the masters trouble. He means Grown-ups generally. You do certain things _as_ they say, work out your sums, and keep your drawers tidy. Then you can live in your own world and they in theirs. They won't bother about you. But, of course, Hugh John is pretty safe anyway. He has a reason for everything, and is always ready to give it if asked. If not, he keeps it to himself, wraps it about him like an inky cloak--and is triply armed because he has his quarrel just--and knows it. But, you see, we are really pretty well off at our house, though we do grumble sometimes. When I was a little girl I rode many hundreds of miles with father on his cycle, and now Hugh John and he spend days over glasses of all descriptions, telescopes and binoculars, while Sir Toady talks about birds' eggs for hours, and has succeeded to father's collection. In the library there are the loveliest books on flowers--both editions of _Curtis_, the _Botanical Magazine_, two _Sowerby's English Botanies_, and lots more in foreign languages. Maid Margaret thinks she will go in for botany so as to get these. But I like best just reading books--or browsing among them, rather. For of course you can't really _read_ forty thousand volumes, even if you knew all the languages they are written in. There are sets of all the magazines that ever were: _Annual Registers_, _Scots Magazines_, _Gentleman's_, _Blackwood's_, _Chamber's_, _Leisure Hour_, _Cassell's_, _Magazine of Art_--oh, everything! And the library, being about eighty feet long altogether, is the loveliest place for wet Saturdays--so "mousey," and window-seaty, with big logs burning on a brass fireplace, and the storm pattering above and all about. It has a zinc roof, only nicely painted and covered with creepers. There is room enough for everybody to lie about, and read, and draw, all the time keeping out of Big Growly's way if he is working. Even if he does see us, he only says, "Get out, Imps! I can't be bothered with you just now!" Only if you are careful and have the kitchen key, you can tell by the growling and the "tick-tack" whereabouts the Ogre of Castle Bookworm is, and slip into another part. Best of all is the Old Observatory, where there is a bed in a little cabin, and windows all about, and a big brass telescope high overhead, with shelves and all sorts of fittings as in a ship. It is first-rate, I tell you. Only you have to put the books you have been using back again exactly, or you will get Ursa Major after you, and he will fetch you out of your bed to do it, storming at you all the time. Then maybe he will forget, and show you the first edition of some book that there are only three or four of in all the world!