When they did arrive in the shop Elsie, having had her breakfast and changed her apron, had already formally opened the establishment and put the bookstand outside in front of the window. The bookstand, it should be mentioned, could now be moved, fully loaded, by one person with ease, for brilliant Violet had had the idea of taking the castors off the back legs of an old armchair and screwing them on to two of the legs of the bookstand, so that you had merely to raise one end of the thing and it slid about as smoothly as a perambulator. Do not despise such achievements of the human brain; such achievements constituted important events in the domestic history of the T. T. Riceyman firm; this one filled Violet with exultation, Henry with pride in his wife, and Elsie with wondering admiration; Elsie never moved the bookstand without glee in the ingenious effectiveness of the contrivance.
Violet, despite the chill, had removed her mantle. She could not possibly wear it in the shop, whatever the temperature, because to do so would be to admit to customers that the shop was cold. Nor would she give an order to light the stove; nor would she have the stove lighted when the master had gone forth on his ways; after the stifled scene at breakfast she must act delicately; moreover, she contemplated a further dangerous, desperate move which might be prejudiced if she availed herself of Henry’s authorization to use her own judgment in regard to the stove. So she acquired warmth by helping Elsie with the cleaning and arranging of the shop for the day. The work was done with rapidity. … Customers might now enter without shaming the management. An age had passed since Elsie, preceding the dawn, arose to turn night into day. Looking at it none could suppose that the shop had ever been sheeted and asleep, or that a little milk-can was but recently squatting at the foot of its locked door. Mysterious magic of a daily ritual, unperceived by the priest and priestesses!
Mr. Earlforward was writing out the tail-end of a long bill in the office. He could not use his antique typewriter for bills, because it would not tabulate satisfactorily. He wore his new eyeglasses, memorial of Violet’s sole victory over him. She had been forced to make him a present of the eyeglasses, true; but he did wear them.
“My dear,” he summoned her in a rather low voice, and she hastened to him, duster in hand. “Here’s this bill for Mr. Bauersch; £148 18s.” He blotted the bill with some old blotting-paper which spread more ink than it absorbed. “And here’s the stamp. I haven’t put it on in case there’s any hitch. I asked him if he’d mind paying in cash. Of course he’s a very big dealer, but you never know with these New Yorkers, and he’s sailing tomorrow, and I’ve not done any business with him before. He said he wouldn’t mind at all.”
“I should hope not, indeed!” said Violet, who, nevertheless, was well aware that the master had asked for cash, not from any lack of confidence in the great Bauersch, but because he had a powerful preference for cash; the sight of a cheque did not rouse Henry’s imagination.
“It’s all ready,” said Henry, pointing to two full packing-cases in front of his desk.
“But are we to nail them up, or what?”
“I haven’t fastened them. He might want to run through them with the bill.”
“Yes,” agreed Violet, who nevertheless was well aware that the master had not fastened them because he had postponed fastening them till too late.
“He’ll take them away in a car; probably have them re-packed with his other purchases. I hear he’s bought over twenty thousand pounds’ worth of stuff in London these last three weeks.”
“Oh, my!”
“And you can put the money in your safe till I get back.”
Henry stood up, took his hat from the top knob of the grandfather’s clock, and buttoned his overcoat. He was going to a book auction at Chingby’s historic salerooms in Fetter Lane. For years he had not attended auctions, for he could never leave the shop for the best part of a day; he had to be content with short visits to ragged sub-dealers in Whitechapel and Shoreditch, and with such offers of “parcels” as came to him uninvited. He always bought cheap or not at all; but he would sell cheap, with very rare exceptions. If he picked up a first edition worth a pound for two shillings he would sell it for five shillings. Thus he had acquired a valuable reputation for bargains. He was shrewd enough—shrewder than most—and ready to part with money in exchange for stock. Indeed, his tendency was to overstock his shop. Violet’s instinct for tidiness and order had combated this tendency, whose dangers he candidly admitted. He had applied the brake to buying. No longer was the staircase embarrassed with heroic and perfect girls in paper dust-jackets! And save in the shop and the office all floors had been cleared of books. A few hundred volumes, in calculated and admired disorder, still encumbered the ground-floor and the lower steps of the staircase, to the end explained by the master to his wife on the morrow of the honeymoon. Stock was now getting a little low, and the master went to certain sales with his wife’s full encouragement. He was an autocrat, but where is the autocrat who can escape influence?
“Now do take care of yourself, darling,” Violet murmured, almost in a whisper. “And if you go to that A.B.C. shop be sure to order some cold beef. What does it matter if you do miss a
