THREE:"Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend; we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still, we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm afraid we'll be late."The table at which she worked was covered with small cardboard slips, bearing in her neat minute handwriting the titles and the authors of the books in Mr Keeling��s library. Each appeared twice, once under its author, once under its title, and these she was sorting out into an alphabetical file from which she would compile her catalogue. She had been at work on it for about a fortnight, and the faint hopes she had originally entertained of getting it finished by the end of the year had now completely vanished. He had been{129} buying books in very large numbers; already wing-bookcases had begun to invade the floor space of his room, and he intended in the spring to build out farther into the garden. But Norah was not at all sure that she regretted the vanishing of those hopes: the work interested her, and she had the true book-lover��s pride in making all the equipment connected with books as perfect as it could be. Three times a week she went with her brother after supper for a couple of hours�� work in Mr Keeling��s library: the other evenings she brought into order at home the collection of slips she had made there.