Near by sat Caroline Baddlesmere at a small table, where a shaded lamp flung down a golden glory upon the white pages of the printer’s proofs she was correcting, reflecting little amber lights that played about her handsome eye-pits and nostrils and mouth and chin. Along the low walls, almost to where the steep roof met them, books were piled for lack of shelves; and the largeness of the room and the atmosphere of the books gave the suggestion of a library that was strangely at variance with a small bed in the far end of the large place, where a candle dimly showed the boy Oliver lying amongst his pillows, watching Netherby Gomme and Julia as they whispered their confidences seated on chairs hard by him. The candle’s light painted their faces picturesquely against the black hollow of an open doorway that led to a smaller attic which was the Baddlesmeres’ sleeping-room. Eyes grown accustomed to this gloom might have seen that a thin line of blue smoke curled upwards from the bed, for Noll was colouring the wedding-present--keeping a sharp look-out lest anyone should see him, and raising a screen of bedclothes with his knees, between himself and detection.... Caroline roused from her work, disturbed by the loud sniff of a shabby little maid-of-all-work who entered the room, a dusting-brush under her arm and a dusting-rag in her hand. “Please, lidy,” said the girl, “may I finish a bit of work by the light of the stove?--I won’t be more than four-and-twenty shakes, and I’ll be very quiet.” Caroline nodded good-humouredly. The lank child--she was little more--stooped down by the blaze of warm light that came from the stove’s open door, and lugging a battered periodical out of her pocket, smoothed it out and began to read.... “What are you doing, Victoria May Alice?” asked Caroline, after a while, smiling at the calm effrontery of the girl. Victoria May Alice uttered a loud sniff: “I was just a-finishing this here chapter, lidy--it’s so blamey dark on the landing. I’d got to such a beautiful part--where Sir ’Enery Marjorrybanks is a-telling of the lady’s-maid as her eyes is so magical and is just a-seein’ of poems in their liquid depths, and all that.... It give me a kind of nice hump the way they was a-goin’ hon----” “What are you reading, Victoria May Alice?” Caroline held out her hand. “Let me see it.” The smudgy little maid handed her the periodical: “It’s _Bow Bells_, marm--what that rummy gent brings me--him what they calls Lovegood.” She went and stood beside her chair as Caroline looked at the paper; and with long bony fingers, not very clean, the girl proceeded to do the honours: