“Thank you, Miss,” said Bob, lifting his cap and showing a delighted face, but immediately relieving himself of some accompanying embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of disgust, “Get out wi’ you, you thunderin’ sawney!” “My brother is not at home yet, Bob,” said Maggie; “he is always at St Ogg’s in the daytime.” “Well, Miss,” said Bob, “I should be glad to see Mr Tom, but that isn’t just what I’m come for,—look here!” Bob was in the act of depositing his pack on the door-step, and with it a row of small books fastened together with string. Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to call Maggie’s attention, but rather something which he had carried under his arm, wrapped in a red handkerchief. “See here!” he said again, laying the red parcel on the others and unfolding it; “you won’t think I’m a-makin’ too free, Miss, I hope, but I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit for them as you’ve lost; for I heared you speak o’ picturs,—an’ as for picturs, _look_ here!” The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated “Keepsake” and six or seven numbers of a “Portrait Gallery,” in royal octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and voluminous neckcloth. “There’s all sorts o’ genelmen here,” Bob went on, turning over the leaves with some excitement, “wi’ all sorts o’ noses,—an’ some bald an’ some wi’ wigs,—Parlament genelmen, I reckon. An’ here,” he added, opening the “Keepsake,”—“_here’s_ ladies for you, some wi’ curly hair and some wi’ smooth, an’ some a-smiling wi’ their heads o’ one side, an’ some as if they were goin’ to cry,—look here,—a-sittin’ on the ground out o’ door, dressed like the ladies I’n seen get out o’ the carriages at the balls in th’ Old Hall there. My eyes! I wonder what the chaps wear as go a-courtin’ ’em! I sot up till the clock was gone twelve last night, a-lookin’ at ’em,—I did,—till they stared at me out o’ the picturs as if they’d know when I spoke to ’em. But, lors! I shouldn’t know what to say to ’em. They’ll be more fittin’ company for you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article.” “And you’ve bought them for me, Bob?” said Maggie, deeply touched by this simple kindness. “How very, very good of you! But I’m afraid you gave a great deal of money for them.”