"I regret to find that it is out."

Then the lady looked naughty. "Why don't you have two copies?" she
pouted.

"Madam," said the librarian, "we have a thousand."

A small and very timid girl of eighteen, with a neat figure that
shrank from observation, although it was already aware that it looked
best in gray, was there to drink in this music, and carried it home in
her heart. She was Elspeth, and that dear heart was almost too full
at this time. I hesitate whether to tell or to conceal how it even
created a disturbance in no less a place than the House of Commons.
She was there with Mrs. Jerry, and the thing was recorded in the
papers of the period in these blasting words: "The Home Secretary was
understood to be quoting a passage from 'Letters to a Young Man,' but
we failed to catch its drift, owing to an unseemly interruption from
the ladies' gallery."

"But what was it you cried out?" Tommy asked Elspeth, when she thought
she had told him everything. (Like all true women, she always began in
the middle.)

"Oh, Tommy, have I not told you? I cried out, 'I'm his sister.'"

Thus, owing to Elspeth's behaviour, it can never be known which was
the passage quoted in the House; but we may be sure of one thing--that
it did the House good. That book did everybody good. Even Pym could
only throw off its beneficent effects by a tremendous effort, and
young men about to be married used to ask at the bookshops, not for