He allowed his librarian _carte blanche_ with regard to shelves and binding.

He agreed to knock a third room into the two which already constituted the library, and to line it with bookcases.

He even went the length of supporting a clever bookbinder at Overstone for several months with work on his own volumes, and, greatest sacrifice of all, forebore his craze of buying right and left for the same space of time until the arrears of work should be overtaken, and a clear idea could be formed of what he already had and what he wanted.

Jeffreys revelled in the work, and when he discovered that he had to deal with one of the most valuable private collections in the country, his pride and sense of responsibility advanced step by step.

He occupied his leisure hours in the study of bibliography; he read books on the old printers and their works; he spent hours with the bookbinder and printer at Overstone, studying the mechanism of a book; he even studied architecture, in connexion with the ventilation and lighting of libraries, and began to teach himself German, in order to be able to master the stores of book- lore buried in that rugged language.
All this, then, was congenial and delightful work.