Mr. Poskitt's Nightcaps

Chapter 13

It was baking-day at Low Meadow Farm, and the kitchen being rendered unusually hot by the fact that it was also a blazing afternoon in July, Mrs. Maidment, in the intervals of going to the oven, sat in a stout elbow-chair at the kitchen door and fanned herself with her apron. She was a comfortably built lady of at least fifty, and heat told upon her, as she had remarked several times since breakfast. Her placid, moon-like countenance, always rosy, was now as fiery as a winter afternoon's sun, and when she was not fanning herself she mopped her brow with one of her late husband's handkerchiefs, which she had taken from a drawer in the press as being larger than her own, and therefore more suitable for the purpose.

While she sat at the door Mrs. Maidment glanced at the prospect before herat the garden, the orchard, the fields beyond where the crops were already whitening to harvest. Her thoughts were of a practical nature.

"I'm sure if Maidment can look down from Above," she murmured, "he'll say it's all in very good order. He never could abide naught that were not in proper order, couldn't Maidment. And if we only get a good harvest"

At that moment the widow's thoughts were interrupted by the sudden clicking of the side gate. She turned and saw a strange man leading an equipage into the yard. The equipage consisted of a very small pony, which looked as if a generous feed of corn would do it good, and of a peculiarly constructed cart, very shallow in body, and closed in at the top by two folding doorsit resembled nothing so much, in fact, as a cupboard laid flat-wise and provided with wheels. As for the person who led in this strange turn-out, and at whom Mrs. Maidment was staring very hard, he was a somewhat seedy-looking gentleman in a frock-coat which was too large and trousers which were too short; there was a slight cast in his right eye, but there was no mistaking the would-be friendliness of his smile. He bowed low as he drew the pony towards Mrs. Maidment, and he removed a straw-hat and revealed a high forehead and a bald head. Mrs. Maidment stared still harder.

"Good-afternoon, ma'am," said the stranger, bowing again. "Allow me to introduce myself, ma'am, as a travelling booksellerit's a new departure in the book trade, and one that I hope to do well in. Permit me to show you my stock, ma'amall the newest volumes of the day by the most famous authors."

He threw back the folding-doors of his cart with a flourish and stepped aside. The July sun flashed its fierce beams on row upon row of flashily-bound, high-coloured volumes in green and scarlet and much fine gold.

"The very latest, I assure you, ma'am," said their vendor.

Mrs. Maidment fanned herself and gazed at the glory before her.

"Well, I don't know, master," she said. "I'm not one for reading myself, except the newspaper and a chapter in the Bible of a Sunday. But my daughter's fond of her bookshe might feel inclined. Here, Mary Ellen!here's a man at the door selling books."

Miss Mary Ellen Maidment, a comely damsel of nineteen with bright eyes and peach-like cheeks, emerged expectant from the kitchen. The itinerant bookseller greeted her with more bows and smiles.

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Mary Ellen, lifting up her hands. "What a lot of beautiful books!"

"Your ma said you were fond of your book, miss," said the owner of this intellectual treasure mine. "Yes, miss, this is an especially fine line. What's your taste, now, miss? Poetry?"

"I like a good piece," answered Mary Ellen.

The itinerant selected two gorgeously bound volumes, and deftly balancing them on the palm of one hand, pointed to their glories with the outstretched forefinger of the other.

"'The Complete Poetical Works of Mrs. H*ee*mans,'" he said. "A very sweet thing that, missone of the best articles in the poetry line." He pointed to the other. "'The Works of the late Eliza Cook.' A very superior production that, miss. It was that talented lady who wrote 'The Old Arm-Chair,' of which you have no doubt heard."

"I learnt it once at school," said Mary Ellen. "Have you got any tales?"

"Tales, missyes, miss," replied the vendor, setting Mrs. Hemans and Miss Cook aside, and selecting a few more volumes. "Here's a beautiful tale by the talented Emma Jane Worboise, the most famous authoress of her day."

"Is there any love in it?" asked Mary Ellen.

"My daughter," broke in Mrs. Maidment, "likes books with love matters and lords and ladies in 'emshe reads pieces of 'em to me at nights."

"That, ma'am, is the only sort I carry," said the book-proprietor. "Now, miss, just let me show you"

In the end Mary Ellen purchased one tale which dealt with much love and many lords and ladies, and another which the seller described as a pious work with a strong love interest, and recommended highly for Sunday reading. She also bought Mrs. Hemans, because on turning over her pages she saw several lines which she thought were pretty. And while she went up-stairs to fetch her purse Mrs. Maidment asked the stranger inside to drink a jug of ale. One can imagine his sharp glance round that old farmhouse kitchen, with its lovely old oak furniture, its shining brass and pewter, its old delf-ware....

"You don't happen to have any old books that you want to clear out of the way, do you, ma'am?" he said, when he had been paid, and was drinking his ale. "I buy anything like thatthere's lots of people glad to get rid of them. I've a sack full of 'em now under the cart there. Of course, they're worth nothing but waste paper price. That's what I have to sell them at, ma'am."

"Why, there's some old books in that chest there," said Mrs. Maidment, pointing to an old chest in the deep window-seat. "I'm sure I've oft said we'd burn 'em, for they're that old and printed so queer that nobody can read 'em. Let him look at 'em, Mary Ellen."

What treasures were they that the wandering merchant's knowing eyes gazed upon? He gazed upon them for some time, according to the eye-witnesses, before he spoke, examining each book with great care.

"Aye, well, ma'am," he said at last. "Of course, as you say, nobody could read them now-a-days. I'll tell you whatI'll give miss here three new books out of the cart for them, and you can pick for yourself, miss!"

Mary Ellen exclaimed joyfullyand the old books went into a sack.

It was not until the next year that a Summer Boarder from London took up temporary quarters at Low Meadow Farm. According to the account which Mrs. Maidment gave to her gossips of him he was a very quiet gentleman who, when he wasn't rambling about the fields and by the streams, was reading in the garden, and when he wasn't reading in the garden was writing in the parlour. And the books he had brought with him, she said, were more than the parson had.

One day, the Summer Boarder, rummaging in a cupboard in his bedroom, saw, on a top-shelf, an old, dust-covered book, and took it down and knocked the dust off and opened it. And then he sank in a chair, gasping. There, in his hand, lay a perfect copy of a fifteenth-century book, so rare that there is no copy of it in either the British Museum or in the Bodleian Libraryno, nor at the Vatican!

He stared at it for a long time, and then, carrying it as some men would carry a rare diamond, he went down to the kitchen, where Mrs. Maidment was making plum-pies.

"This is a queer old book which I found in my cupboard, Mrs. Maidment," he said. "May I look at it?"

"Aye, and welcome, sir!" said Mrs. Maidment. "And keep it, too, sir, if you'll accept of it. Eh, we'd a lot of old stuff like that in that box there in the window-place, but last year" And then the Summer Boarder heard the story of the travelling bookseller.

"And I'm sure, sir, it were very kind of the man," concluded Mrs. Maidment, "and I've always said so, to give Mary Ellen three new books, and bound so beautiful, for naught but a lot of old rubbish that nobody could read!"

Then the Summer Boarder went out into the garden and faced a big Moral Problem.