“Sugar’s concrete,” was the reply, “and if you abstract it, you get spanked. We’ve got no sugar here. If you’d like a Pure White, Crystallised, Disinterested Love, we keep that, although there’s not much demand. They mostly use the coarser kinds. They say they’re sweeter.”
“Ah!” I cried, “you deal in abstract nouns then.”
“That’s more like it. It’s a clumsy way of putting it, but it’s fairly right. We supply, or, to speak more accurately, we groce, all the Emotions to the Solar System, and trade’s very slack just now in that branch. We are doing rather better in States of Being, and we’ve just got a new assortment of Deaths. Now, once for all, do you intend to buy anything?”
I remembered with joy that I had a couple of sovereigns and some loose silver in my pocket. All my life long I had suffered from want of emotional experiences. I had always regretted the want of variety, the general flatness and dulness. If the delusion or reality—I neither knew nor cared now which it was—would only last, I was determined to gratify to the full my fine perceptions. Especially was I struck with the mention of the Pure White Love. I may confess at once that I never got on much with women. I have a natural dignity and reserve that is sometimes mistaken for nervousness. I fancy it sets women against me. Somehow I am never able to say to them quite what I want to say. I have often looked at a young girl, and thought that if she could only know me as I really was—if she could once regard me as apart from wretched circumstances, my poverty, my shabby clothes, my unfortunate reserve—she might abate something of her pretty scorn.
“Certainly, I intend to buy something,” I said. “To commence with, I should like to see some samples of that peculiar Love you mentioned.”
“Dear me!” broke in Mr. Joseph. “How many more times am I to tell you? You can’t see samples. You can feel them if you like. James!”
“Yes, Joseph,” answered the boyish voice from the further end of the shop.
“Let’s have some of the ‘Pure White,’—look sharp.”
“Right.”
“Now then,” continued Mr. Joseph. “Take that chair. Adopt an easy, natural position. Don’t cross the legs. If you find the light too strong, you can blink the eyes once or twice, it won’t make any difference. Head a little more this way. You’re frowning. That’s better. Now then, we’re ready. Steady, please.”