CHAPTER XIII
HENRY WIMBUSH brought down with him to dinner a budget of printed sheets loosely bound together in a cardboard portfolio.
"To-day," he said, exhibiting it with a certain solemnity, "to-day I have finished the printing of my History of Crome. I helped to set up the type of the last page this evening."
"The famous History"" cried Anne. The writing and the printing of this Magnum Opus had been going on as long as she could remember. All her childhood long Uncle Henry's History had been a vague and fabulous thing, often heard of and never seen.
"It has taken me nearly thirty years," said Mr. Wimbush. "Twenty-five years of writing and nearly four of printing. And now it’s finished—the whole chronicle, from Sir Ferdinando Lapith's birth to the death of my father William Wimbush—more than three centuries and a half: a
119
