"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 sale-rooms 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 few lots?"
"I'll see."
They parted at the shop-door on a note of hard, cheerful indifference: note struck for the sake of the proprieties of a place of business—and utterly false. For Henry loved his wife to worry about him, and Violet's soul was heavy with apprehensions. She saw herself helpless in a situation growing ever more formidable.