"Did you?" said Dr. Raste, wondering at the bookseller's memory.
"Yes. I was mixing it up with another edition. Easy to make a mistake of that kind. Well, just look at it. Biography. Notes. Beautiful clear type. Nice, modest binding, in very good taste. Light and handy to hold. Clean as a pin. Nearly two hundred illustrations—from the Boydell edition. I told you Flaxman's illustrations, didn't I? Yes, I did. That was wrong. I somehow got the idea they were Flaxman's because they're in outline. But I see there's quite a selection of artists." He peered at the names engraved in microscopic characters under the illustrations, and passed on volume after volume to the prospective customer. "Pretty edition."
A silence. Violet stood attendant—an acolyte, submissive, watchful—while Henry did business.
"I'm afraid it'll be too dear for my purse," said the doctor, affrighted by the thought of nearly two hundred illustrations from Boydell.
"Twenty-five shillings."
"I'd better take it," said the doctor, looking up from the books into Mr. Earlforward's little eyes; he was startled at the lowness of the price, and immediately counted out the money—two notes and two new half-crowns, which Mr. Earlforward gazed at passionately, and in a bravura of self-control left lying on the desk.
"Make them up into two parcels, will you?" said the doctor. "I'll carry them home myself. I suppose you wouldn't be able to deliver to-night? Too late?"
"Yes. Too late to-night, I'm afraid," answered Mr. Earlforward calmly, well aware that he had long since ceased to deliver any goods under any circumstances. "My dear, some nice brown paper and string. Oh! The string's here, isn't it?" He bent down to a drawer of the desk, and drew out a tangle of all manner of pieces of string.
Violet now became important in the episode, and took charge of the wrapping; her mien showed a conviction that she could make up a parcel as well as her husband.
"Hospitals are getting in a bad way," said Dr. Raste, and Mr. Earlforward thought to himself that the doctor was one of those distressing persons who from nervousness could not endure a silence.