Through the window came the strong scent of the purple lilacs, that grew all over the little New England town. Faint cries of children playing drifted in with the breeze. The organ in the church nearby crooned and droned a continual fugue. Someone was always practising there. The deep, bass notes jarred the air, even the little building trembled to them at times. And since it had been at this season of the year, when he had first found the book, the lovely broken myths, elusive sometimes, and as dim to his understanding as the marble fragments that still bewilder the enchanted artist, he always connected with that throbbing, mournful melody, that haunting lilac odour. Sometimes the organ swelled triumphantly and cried out in a mighty chorus of tone: at those times Ulysses shot down the false suitors, or Perseus, hovering over the shrieking sea-beast, rescued the white Andromeda. Sometimes a minor plaintive strain troubled him vaguely, and then he listened to poor Venus, bending in tears above the slain Adonis. "_'Yet theirs shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of my grief shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my lamentation, shall be annually renewed. Your blood shall be turned into a flower; that consolation none shall envy me.' Thus speaking, she sprinkled nectar on the blood; and as they mingled, bubbles rose as in a pool, on which rain-drops fall, and in an hour's time there sprang up a flower of bloody hue, like that of the pomegranate. But it is short-lived._" The peculiar odour of much leather on pine shelves was confused, too, with the darling book. He had never read it elsewhere; he had not money enough for a library-ticket. Old Mr. Littlejohn, quickly recognising the invaluable services that this little acolyte might be counted upon to render, had readily granted him the freedom of the shelves, and smoked his pipe in peace for hours together, thereafter, in the back room, sure of his monitor in front. Miss Watkins needed no such assistance, but she found herself, to her amazement, not wholly ungrateful for the many steps saved her by Jimmy's tactful service to the children. At first she would have none of it, and groups of shy boys and girls waited awkwardly and in vain before the little gate, hoping for a glimpse of their kindly counsellor. She thrust lists of juveniles into their unwilling hands, led them cautiously into an inspection of Nature Lessons for Little Learners, displayed tempting rows of bound _St. Nicholas_--but to no purpose. "Where's Jimmy?" they demanded stubbornly. "What on earth do they want of him?" she asked of her assistant one day. "That stupid Meadows child--is she going to ask his opinion of the Dotty Dimple Books?" "Not at all," Miss Mather replied tranquilly. "But he always gets her a Mary J. Holmes novel, and I stamp it and let it go. You always argue with her about it, and ask her if she wouldn't prefer something else--which she never would."