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The bookseller's window was filled with yellow-backed novels and toy-books, which obviously would not do. So they marched in and demanded a book suitable for a clergyman who had a good many books already "a middle-aged clergyman," George added. "You can't go far wrong with this," suggested the bookseller, producing Crockford's "Clerical Directory" for the current year.
The boy had run riot here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking chair, a battered old table, a heap of old illustrated newspapers, and torn toy-books.
They have never dreamed among the cowslips of the real fields, they have never watched the ways of the birds from under an oak. Children instinctively see that these toy-books are not natural, and do not care for them; they may be illustrated in gold and colours, sumptuously got up, and yet they are failures. Children do not take these to bed with them.
Here the matter ended, leaving both parties very dissatisfied. For some time to come there was a great coldness between them, and their correspondence almost entirely ceased. The failure of his attempt to make money by contributing poems to the gold-edged toy-books had the good result of inciting Clare to renewed exertions to return to his old sphere of labour.
Seeing her delight, and feeling particularly lavish with plenty of money in his pocket, the young gentleman completed the child's bliss by telling her to choose whichever one she liked best out of the pile of Walter Crane's toy-books lying in bewildering colors before her.
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