Further talk followed. Lestrange grew interested in the phenomenon of a blacksmith that bound books and read them. He began to dream of patronage and responsive devotion. What a thing it would be for him, in after years, with the cares of property and parliament combining to curtail his leisure, to have such a man at his beck, able to gather the information he desired, and to reduce, tabulate, and embody it so as to render his chief the best-informed man in the House! while at other times he would manage for him his troublesome tenants, and upon occasion shoe his wife's favourite horse! He could also depend upon him to provide, from the rich stores of his memory, suitable quotations when he wished to make a speech! Lestrange had never thought whether the wish to _appear_ might not indicate the duty to _be_; had never seen that, until he _was_, to desire to _appear_ was to cherish the soul of a sneak. He had no notion of anything but the look; no notion that, having made a good speech, he would deserve an atom the less praise for it that he could not have made it without his secretary. Did any one think the less of clearing a five-barred gate, he would have answered, that it could not be done without a horse? Where was the difference? A man you paid to be your secretary, still more a man whose education to be your secretary you had paid for--was he not yours in a way at least analogous to that in which a horse was yours? He could break away from you more easily, no doubt, but a man knew better than a horse on which side his bread was buttered! “I think, squire, I'll go and have a pipe with the coachman!” said the blacksmith at length. “As you please, Armour,” answered Lestrange. “I will take care of your--nephew, is he?” “My grandson, sir--from London.” “All right! There's good stuff in the breed, Armour!--I will bring him to you.” Richard went on taking down book after book, and showing his host how much they required attention. “And you could set all right for--?--for how much?” asked Lestrange. “That no one could say. It would, however, cost little more than time and skill. The material would not come to much. Only, where the paper itself is in decay, I do not know about that. I have learned nothing in that department yet.” “For generations none of us have cared about books--that must be why they have gone so to the bad!--the books, I mean,” he added with a laugh. “There was a bishop, and I think there was a poet, somewhere in the family; but my father--hm!--I doubt if he would care to lay out money on the library!” “Tell him,” suggested Richard, “that it is a very valuable library--at least so it appears to me from the little I have seen of it; but I am sure of this, that it is rapidly sinking in value. After another twenty years of neglect it would not fetch half the price it might easily be brought up to now.”