His first peep assuredly was not what he had looked forward to, but who knew to what hidden chambers of interest the door at the far side of the front shop gave access?
Afraid to further pursue his inspection, Henry moved away somewhat hurriedly when the young man at the desk showed signs of moving towards the door, having probably scented a customer.
He wandered next to Shakespeare's Church, lingering on the way at the Memorial, then fresh from the hands of the builders, and loudly out of harmony with everything else in Stratford. Anon he was peeping in at the old Grammar School and the Guild Hall, and tea-time found him loitering around the Birthplace, with half a desire to set out then and there to Anne Hathaway's Cottage.
The business of dealing in Shakespeare's memory had not yet developed into Stratford's staple industry, nor had local boyhood begun to earn precarious pennies by waylaying visitors and rehearsing to them in parrot fashion the leading dates in the life of the poet. But the principal show-place of the town had long been attracting pilgrims from the ends of the earth, and for the first time in his life Henry heard the English language produced with strong nasal accompaniment by a group of brisk-looking young men and women issuing from the shrine in Market Street.
There was little sleep for him that night, nor was the unusual circumstances of his sharing a bed with another youth the cause of it. He wondered at his ability to peep in at Mr. Griggs's door without entering precipitately and avowing himself the new assistant. But his father's instructions on this point had been explicit. He had to present himself at the proper hour of the morning; neither early nor late, but at the hour precisely. It would have been unbusiness-like to stroll in the previous afternoon, and if business-like habits were not acquired now they never would be.
But Henry had read so recently the wonderful story of "Monte Cristo," and was so impressed by the hero's habit of keeping his appointments to the second, that he required no advice on this point.
"Suppose I go down in the morning and enter the shop when the market-clock is striking the fifth note of nine. That would be a good start to make!"
Thus he thought, and thus he did. But alas! the new Monte Cristo found no appreciative audience awaiting him.
For a moment he stood at the counter in the middle of the shop, with half a mind to run away. His entry had been unheralded, unobserved. No one was visible. But hesitating whether to knock on the counter, as customers at Hampton Post Office were wont to do, or take down a book until someone appeared, he became aware of certain sounds issuing from behind a wooden partition which enclosed a corner of the shop.
Henry shuffled his feet noisily, and plucked up courage to rap on the counter, for the market-clock had ceased its striking by quite a minute, and no one had witnessed his romantic punctuality.