"I don't know whether you'll find what you want," he said; "but it's all

I know of it." He looked at Celia as he spoke, and added, "Oh, perhaps

this young lady can help you; she does antiquarian work."

The young man coloured and raised his eyes appealingly to Celia.

"Oh, I couldn't trouble you," he said, humbly.

"What is it?" she asked. "I shall be glad to help you, if I can."

He took up some slips of paper on which were "pulled" impressions of

blocks, and Celia saw that they were pictures of ruined castles, abbeys,

and similar buildings.

"This is the trouble," said the young man. "The man I work for--he's the

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proprietor of the Youth's Only Companion--is a rum sort of chap, and

fancies he has ideas. One of them was to buy up a lot of old blocks in

Germany; these are they, and he's given me the job of writing them up,

fitting them with descriptive letterpress--history, anecdote, that kind

of thing, you know."

"That should not be very difficult," Celia remarked.

"Oh, no!" he assented; "but"--he grinned, and his whole face lit up with

boyish humour--"the beastly things have no names to them! See? I've

tried to hunt them up in all the old county histories, and books of that

kind; but I've succeeded in getting only two or three, and there's a

couple of dozen of the wretched things. I've driven the superintendent

pretty nearly mad, and--But look here, I don't want to drive you mad,

too. You mustn't let me bother you about it; you've got your own work to

do."

"That's all right," said Celia, bending over the slips with the literary

frown on her young face. "Oh, I can recognize some of them; that's

Pevensey Castle; and that's Knowle House, before it was rebuilt; and,

surely, this one is meant for Battle Abbey."

"I say, how clever you are!" he exclaimed, gazing at her with

admiration.

"Oh, no, I'm not," said Celia, with a smile; "I just happen to remember

them because I've come across them in the course of my own work. Let us

go over the others."

She turned to his pile of books and, still with knit brows, tried to

find the counterpart of the other pulls; and the young fellow watched

her, his eyes growing thoughtful and something more, as they dwelt upon

her face.

"You mustn't worry any more," he begged her, presently. "You're losing

all your own time; I feel ashamed; I'm most awfully grateful to you."




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