Mr. Ripley had, however, other strings to his bow, or he would not have prospered. He did a good business in bookselling and was even now and again successful in the more conventional publishing line. In this connection I chanced to be of some service to him, to which circumstance I owed a considerable improvement in my position after I had been with him getting on a year. He had long contemplated, and at length begun to work upon, a series of handbooks on British birds and insects, dealt with county by county. In the compilation of these much research was necessary, wherein I proved myself a useful and painstaking coadjutor. In addition, however, my own knowledge of the subject was fairly extensive as regarded Hampshire, which county, and especially that part of it about Winton, is rich in lepidoptera of a rare order. I may say I fairly earned the praise he bestowed upon me, which was tinged, perhaps, with a trifle of jealousy on his part, due to the fact that the section I touched proved to be undoubtedly the most popular of the series, as judged subsequently by returns.
Not to push on too fast, however, I must hark back to the day of my engagement, which was marked by my introduction to one who eventually exercised a considerable influence over my destinies.
During the course of that first morning Mr. Ripley sent me for some copies of a pamphlet that were in order of sewing down below. By his direction I descended a spiral staircase of iron and found myself in the composing-room. At a heavy iron-sheeted table stood my new-found friend, who was, despite his youth, the valued foreman of this department. He hailed me with glee and asked: “What success?”
“All right, thanks to you,” I said; “and where may the bookbinding place be and Dolly Mellison?”
“Oh, you’re for there, are you?” he said, with I thought a rather curious look at me, and he pointed to a side door.
Passing through this I found myself in a long room, flanked to the left with many machines and to the right with a row of girls who were classifying, folding or sewing the sheets of print recent from the press.
“I’m to ask for Dolly Mellison,” I said, addressing the girl at my end of the row.
“Well, you won’t have far to go,” she said. “I’m her.”
She was a pretty, slim lily of a thing, lithe and pale, with large gray eyes and coiled hair like a rope of sun-burned barleystraw, and her fingers petted her task as if that were so much hat-trimming.
“I’m sent by Mr. Ripley for copies of a pamphlet on ‘The Supineness of Theologicians,’” I said.