My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I had not intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he held the gate open politely, murmuring “Venit Hesperus ite, capellae: come, little kid!” and then apologising abjectly for a familiarity which (he said) was less his than the Roman poet's. A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice, waking up and apologising humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put two and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor, eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend was already beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in that he was alleged to have written a real book. “Heaps o' books,” Martha, my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate of discount applicable to Martha's statements. We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck me at once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None of your feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout volumes in calf and vellum lined three sides; books sprawled or hunched themselves on chairs and tables; books diffused the pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings; topping all, a faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly, as under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's head of the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one corner, book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano. This I hailed with a squeal of delight. “Want to strum?” inquired my friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the world--his eyes were already straying towards another corner, where bits of writing-table peeped out from under a sort of Alpine system of book and foolscap. “O, but may I?” I asked in doubt. “At home I'm not allowed to--only beastly exercises!” “Well, you can strum here, at all events,” he replied; and murmuring absently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible writing-able. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an absorption almost passionate. I might have been in Boeotia, for any consciousness he had of me. So with a light heart I turned to and strummed.