OF THE BOOKS
broad base-shelf, picked up his crutch, and went out. As she watched his retreating figure, a little uneasy, feeling troubled her usual calm. He seemed so small, so harmless a person.
A little later it occurred to her to see how he had entered the library, and stepping through the two smaller rooms at the back, choked and dusty with neglected piles of old magazines, she noticed a door ajar. Picking her way through the chaos, she pulled the knob, and saw that it gave on a tiny back porch. On the steps sat the janitor, as incompetent, from the librarian's point of view, as his late employer.
"I thought you were sweeping off the walks, Thomas," she suggested, coughing as the wreaths from his pipe reached her.
"Well, yes. Miss Watkins, so I was. I just stopped a minute to rest, you see," he explained, eyeing her distrustfully. Since her advent life had changed greatly for the janitor.
"I see Thomas, does that little lame boy come in this way?"
167
