"So you are going to bring all your library, Mr. Juxon?" asked the vicar
returning to the charge.

"Yes--and I beg you will make any use of it you please," answered the
visitor. "I have a great fondness for books and I think I have some
valuable volumes. But I am no great scholar, as you are, though I read a
great deal. I have always noticed that the men who accumulate great
libraries do not know much, and the men who know a great deal have very
few books. Now I will wager that you have not a thousand volumes in your
house, Mr. Ambrose."

"Five hundred would be nearer the mark," said the vicar.

"The fewer one has the nearer one approaches to Aquinas's _homo unius
libri_," returned the squire. "You are nine thousand five hundred degrees
nearer to ideal wisdom than I am."

Mr. Ambrose laughed.

"Nevertheless," he said, "you may be sure that if you give me leave to
use your books, I will take advantage of the permission. It is in writing
sermons that one feels the want of a good library."

"I should think it would be an awful bore to write sermons," remarked the
squire with such perfect innocence that both the vicar and Mrs. Goddard
laughed loudly. But Mrs. Ambrose eyed Mr. Juxon with renewed severity.

"I should fancy it would be a much greater bore, as you call it, to the
congregation if my husband never wrote any new ones," she said stiffly.
Whereat the squire looked rather puzzled, and coloured a little. But Mr.