help. She will be down in a moment, my dear. We have established
an overflow bookcase in a cupboard upstairs, and she has just gone
up with a load. Ah! here she is. Bell, my dear, Mrs. and Miss
Grahame. So kind of them to come and see us!"

Bell shook hands warmly, her frank, pleasant face shining with
good-will. "I am so glad to see you!" she cried, sitting down by
Hildegarde on a pile of Punches. "I hoped you would come to-day,
even if the books are not in order yet. They are so dear, the
books; they are part of the family, and we want to be sure that
they have places they like. I suppose Punch ought by rights to go
with people of his own sort--if there is anybody!--but one wants
him close at hand, don't you think so? where one can take him up
any time,--when it rains, or when things bother one. Do you
remember that Leech picture?" and they babbled of Punch, their
beloved, for ten minutes, and liked each other better at every one
of the ten.

"Bell, I want Mrs. and Miss Grahame to see our other children,"
said Mrs. Merryweather, presently. "Where is Toots, and where are
the boys?"

"Toots is upstairs, poor lamb!" Bell replied. "When Mary came to
tell me of our visitors' arrival I was just putting away Sibbes's
'Soul's Conflict,' and various other dreadful persons whom you
would not let me burn; so I dumped them in Toots's arms, and ran
off and left her. Being a ''bedient old soul,' she is probably
standing just where I left her. I will go--"

But at this moment Toots appeared,--a girl of fifteen, tall, shy