Brion wondered, and without any great excitement, if this arrival might portend the return of his Uncle and Clerivault to the Grange. He did not seem to care much, one way or the other; but certainly the practical business of thus preparing for them was useful in keeping his mind occupied with something other than its own unhappiness. Especially was he pleased with the books--of which there was a considerable number--and with the promise they held out to him of a temporary forgetfulness in their absorption. He took much time and thought over their classification and shelving, and was gratified to discover amongst them some old friends, together with others he had heard of whose acquaintance he was interested to make. For he had always been a reader, appreciative and discriminative above his years, and in that respect owed to his good old preceptor, who had done much to direct his tastes. Now amongst the volumes familiar to him through knowledge or repute he counted to his satisfaction the following items:-- _A Christian exhortacion unto customable swearers_: by Miles Coverdale (A more or less recent tract whose title tickled him). _Cooper’s Chronicle_, of the Kings’ Successions, ‘wyth divers profitable Histories’ (Also recent, as brought up to date to the seventh year of the Queen’s Majesty’s reign). Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_, with the Caxton imprint. Sir Thomas More’s _Utopia_ (done into English by Robynson, with the date 1551, though, if in the original Latin, it had possessed small difficulties for him). _The Bayte and Snare of Fortune_: by Roger Bieston (a highly moral discourse, ‘treated in a Dialogue betwene man and money,’ and printed ‘At the signe of the Sunne over against the conduite in Fletestrete’). _The obedyence of a Chrysten Man_: by William Tyndale, translator of the Bible-- And some others. There were also a good many books, contentious or expository, on Romish theology, and quite a number of illuminated Vulgates, Psalters, Passionales, Lectionariums, Graduals, Breviaries and Books of Hours, most of which were of extreme value and beauty. All these gave him great satisfaction in prospect, as, with one possible exception, they most certainly would not do to a Brion of to-day; but the small reading of 1574, excluding such levities as the _Decamerone_ and the impossible extravagances of Sir John Mandeville, to be seemly had to be dull. Even the unprecedented Knight of la Mancha had not yet stalked into print; and Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe were decades away.