Far back in the shop a daring explorer might come upon a third window, gray, grimy, beyond which lay the unnamable backyards between Cripple and Academy Streets. It could not be said to “open on” them, for it was never opened, or “give a view” of them, being thick with gray dust. But if one went up to it and looked carefully, there in the dim corner might be seen an old man with a long faded black coat, rabbinical beard, dusky, transparent skin, and Buddha eyes, blue, faint, far away, self-abnegating, such as under the Bo-tree might have looked forth in meek abstraction on the infinities and perceived the Eightfold Principle. It was always possible to find Mr. Barria by steering for the window. So appeared the old bookshop on Cripple Street, Mr. Barria, the dealer, and his granddaughter, Janey.
Nature made Cripple Street to be calm and dull; for the hand of man, working through generations, is the hand of nature, as surely as in nature the oriole builds its nest or the rootlets seek their proper soil. Cripple Street ran from Coronet to Main Street and its paving was bad. There were a few tailors and bookbinders, a few silent, clapboarded houses.
But two doors from the corner on Coronet Street stood Station No. 4, of the Fire Brigade, and Cripple Street was the nearest way to Main Street, whither No. 4 was more likely to be called than elsewhere. So that, though nature made Cripple Street to be calm and dull, No. 4, Fire Brigade, sometimes passed it, engine, ladder, and hose, in the splendor of the supernatural, the stormy pageantry of the gods; and one Tommy Durdo drove the engine.
Durdo first came into Mr. Barria's shop in search of a paper-covered novel with a title promising something wild and belligerent. It was a rainy, dismal day, and Janey sat among the dust and refuse of forgotten centuries.
“My eyes!” he thought. “She's a peach.”
He lost interest in any possible belligerent novel, gazed at her with the candor of his youthfulness, and remarked, guilefully:
“I bet you've seen me before now.”
“You drive the engine,” said Janey, with shining eyes.
“Why, this is my pie,” thought Durdo, and sat down by her on a pile of old magazines. He was lank, muscular, with a wide mouth, lean jaws, turn-up nose, and joyful eyes. The magazines contained variations on the loves of Edwards, Eleanors, and other people, well-bred, unfortunate, and possessed of sentiments. Durdo was not well-bred, and had not a presentable sentiment in his recollection. He had faith in his average luck, and went away from Mr. Barria's shop at last with a spot in the tough texture of his soul that felt mellow.
“J. Barria, bookdealer,” he read from the sign. “J! That's Janey, ain't it? Hold on. She ain't the bookdealer. She ain't any ten-cent novel either. She's a Rushy bound, two dollar and a half a copy, with a dedication on the fly-leaf, which”—Tommy stopped suddenly and reflected—“which it might be dedicated to Tommy.”