He was left his own master in it, and had the pride of seeing the work growing under his hands: and when one day Mr Rimbolt arrived from London with a great man in the world of old books, for the express purpose of exhibiting to him his treasures, it called an honest flush to the librarian's face to hear the visitor say, "Upon my word, Rimbolt, I don't know whether to congratulate you most on your books or the way in which they are kept! Your librarian is a genius!" If all his life could have been spent in the shelter of the library Jeffreys would have had little to complain of.

But it was not, and out of it it needed no great discernment to perceive that he had anything but a friend in Mrs Rimbolt.

She was not openly hostile; it was not worth her while to wage war on a poor domestic, but she seemed for all that to resent his presence in the house, and to be possessed of a sort of nervous desire to lose no opportunity of putting him down.
After about a week, during which time Jeffreys had not apparently taken her hint as to the arranging of his person in "respectful" raiment.
Walker waited upon the librarian in his chamber with a brown-paper parcel.
"My lady's compliments," said he, with a grin--he was getting to measure the newcomer by his mistress's standard--"and hopes they'll suit." It was a left-off suit of Mr Rimbolt's clothes, with the following polite note: "As Mr Jeffreys does not appear disposed to accept Mrs Rimbolt's advice to provide himself with clothes suitable for the post he now occupies at Wildtree Towers, she must request him to accept the accompanying parcel, with the wish that she may not again have occasion to refer to so unpleasant a subject." Jeffreys flushed scarlet as he read this elegant effusion, and, greatly to Walker's astonishment crushed the letter up into a ball and flung it out of the window.
"Take that away!" he shouted, pointing to the parcel.
"The mistress sent it for--" "Take it away, do you hear ?" shouted Jeffreys, starting up with a face so terrible that Walker turned pale, and evacuated the room with the offending parcel as quickly as possible.
Jeffreys' outburst of temper quickly evaporated, and indeed gave place to a much more prolonged fit of shame.

Was this like conquering the evil in his nature, to be thus thrown off his balance by a trifle?
As it happened, he had ordered a suit of clothes in Overstone some days back, and was expecting them that very afternoon.
Mr Rimbolt, on the day after his engagement, had as delicately as possible offered him a quarter's salary in advance, which Jeffreys, guessing the source which inspired the offer, had flatly refused.

Mr Rimbolt's gentlemanly urging, however, and the consciousness that his present clothes were disreputable, as well as another consideration, induced him to accept a month's stipend; and on the strength of this he had visited the Overstone tailor.
But before doing so he had discharged his mind of a still more important duty.