The customer, with his hands behind him and his legs somewhat apart, was staring at a case of calf-bindings. A short, carefully dressed man, dapper and alert, he had the air neither of a bookman nor of a member of the upper-middle class.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I just had to slip out, and I've nobody else here," said the bookseller quietly and courteously, but with no trace of obsequiousness.
"Not at all!" replied the customer. "I was very interested in the books here."
The bookseller, like many shopkeepers a fairly sure judge of people, perceived instantly that the customer must have acquired deportment from somewhere after adolescence, together with the art of dressing. There was abruptness in his voice, and the fact was that he had learnt manners above his original station in a strange place—Palestine, under Allenby.
"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a Shakspere in stock; I mean a pretty good one?"
"What sort of a Shakspere? I've got a number of Shaksperes."
"Well, I don't quite know.... I've been thinking for a long time I ought to have a Shakspere."
"Illustrated?" asked the bookseller, who had now accurately summed up his client as one who might know something of the world, but who was a simpleton in regard to books.
"I really haven't thought." The customer gave a slight good-humoured snigger. "I suppose it would be nice to have pictures to look at."
"I have a good clean Boydell, and a Dalziel. But perhaps they'd be rather big."