The library was in comparative order. Like all the rooms in the house, it was light, and the bookshelves had been painted white, which I thought very gay. The floor had been covered with a cool green-and-white matting, and the green blinds were drawn down to temper the brightness of the room. It was a real summer room as I saw it first, and the effect was increased by the open French window, which led on to a flight of steps going down to the garden. Tea was set out on a table, with strawberries in their own green leaves, and honey, fresh from the hive, with many other good things; but it was not the eatables that made me draw a long breath of rapture. It was what seemed to me the endless number of books--books of every kind I saw at a glance, grave and gay, ancient and modern, poetry, novels, biography, art, in all manner of bindings, from purple morocco to the humble paper yellowback. They were piled high on the floor, and in boxes, some opened, some still unopened. Rows of the books were hastily set on the shelves, to be out of the way, I felt sure, for they were higgledy-piggledy, upside down, long and short, and most incongruous neighbours. You, good people, who have never wanted for books, can have no idea of what the sight meant to me, to whom a solitary book newly come my way, represented hours of delight. I simply stood and sniffed at the books, inhaling the smell of them with rapture. For the moment I did not ask to touch; to gape at them was enough; and twice Mrs. O'Connor asked me to take my seat at the tea-table unheard. "There!" said Oona, "she never saw so many books before in her life. Come away, Miss Hilda dear, and have your tea; but sure I never saw the day, no matter how young you were, that you wouldn't rather have an ould romaush of a book than your good food." "Is that the way with her?" said Mary O'Connor, as I came reluctantly to the table. "Whethen she'll have to be findin' her way to Rose Hill every day that's in it, if she's to get through half the books. I hear there's thousands more to come down." "That won't give her much trouble," said Oona proudly. "Why, before she was three she could read me the whole news was on the papers." "You don't say so!" cried her cousin, with hands flung out in admiration.