Hugh laughingly disclaimed starvation, and begged to wait till their tea-time. "I am not hungry, truly I am not," he said. "There is so much to say, too, isn't there, Uncle John? Father is very well and hearty. I have a pipe for you in my bag. I brought a bag with me; do you suppose you could put me up for a few days, Uncle?"
Reassured by Mr. Montfort's earnest assurance that he should keep him all summer, Hugh leaned back in his chair, and looked about him with eager eyes.
"This is the library!" he said. "Uncle John, ever since I learned to read, one of my dreams has been to see this room. Father has always told us about it, and where his favorite books were, and where you all used to sit when you came here to read."
He rose and, crossing the room, took a book from a shelf without a moment's hesitation. "Here is the 'Morte d'Arthur,'" he said; "you see I knew where to find it. And Father used to sit on top of that stepladder."
"So he did!" cried Mr. Montfort, delighted. "I can see him now, with one leg curled under him, eating apples and shouting about Lancelot and Tristram."
"And you sat in the great copper coal-hod--ah! there it is!--and read Froissart, the great folio with the colored prints. I see it, just in the place father described."
"Uncle John," said Margaret, reproachfully, "you never told me that you sat in the coal-scuttle. I know papa's perch, the mantel-piece, because he could get at the little Shakespeares from there."
"Leave me some remnant of dignity, Meg," he said. "How can you expect me to confess that I sat in the coal-scuttle? Have you no reverence for gray hairs?"
"Oh, a very great deal, dear Uncle; but there were no gray hairs in the coal-scuttle days; and my only regret about you is the not having known you when you were a boy."
"Horrid monkey, I have been given to understand," said her uncle, lightly. "Go on, Hugh; tell us some more of the things that Jim--your father--remembers. Old Jim! it's a great shame that he never comes to look up the old place himself."
"It is indeed, sir!" said Hugh. "I've always thought so, and now that I see the place--oh, I shall send him, that's all, as soon as ever I get home. There are the Indian clubs; oh, the carved one--is it true that that was given to Grandfather Montfort by a Fiji chief, or was the Pater fooling us? He sometimes makes up things, he acknowledges, just for the fun of it."