"Otway," he ponders, in response to your inquiry; "let me think. H'm. Yes, yes, to be sure, behind the set of 'English Men of Letters.' Not there? H'm. Well, I must have sold him, then. Oh, no. You will find him in that row of old dramatists, behind the—yes, there! A little to the left—Ah! of course. Old Otway, and a very nice, sound copy, too."
Not that all the books in Mr. Rowlandson's shop are old; his clientele is too diversified. The moderns are there, too. Thackeray and Dickens; Meredith and Carlyle; Tennyson; gallant old Sir Walter in various editions.
"Lockhart's 'Life,'" he would say, handling a volume from one hand to the other. "The saddest true story in the world"; and then, brightening, "Two pound, ten."
Mr. Barrie is always handsomely represented on Mr. Rowlandson's shelves. He is one of the few authors Mr. Rowlandson will recommend to casual customers. He suggests "Margaret Ogilvy: A Memoir. By her Son." "But are you sure it is by Barrie?"—they ask. He has sold more than four hundred copies. Once a year for several years he has written a letter to Mr. Barrie's publishers: "Why don't you bring out his Plays?" he pleads. "Think of the thousands of people in the provinces and in America who can't see them on the stage."
Mr. Rowlandson treasures a half-promise from Mr. Hewlett that he will write a novel around the picturesque, if unheroic, figure of François Villon. "I am keeping his letter," says Mr. Rowlandson, "to insert in the book—when it is published."
Of De Morgan he observes, sententiously: "Too late." Joseph Conrad's novels he shelves next to Stevenson's, significantly. He has a high regard for Arthur Christopher Benson's essays. "But does the man think I have as much shelving as the Museum?" he growls.
But these newer books are the minority. The composed, brown calf bindings give the shop its tone,—and its faint odor, too; a cultivated taste, the liking for that odor of old books.
Mr. Rowlandson's desk is in the alcove at the back of the shop; and in its lowest drawer, oftener than elsewhere, his gray cat, Selima, stretches her lazy length.
On a bright, crisp morning, nearly a week after Phyllis had lain awake thinking, Mr. Rowlandson sat at this desk, looking through his post, which consisted chiefly of book-catalogues. Having laid these aside, he opened a bulky parcel the post had brought. It proved to be a thick, square, black volume; a most unattractive book. But Mr. Rowlandson viewed it with interest.
"My me! My me!" he exclaimed, and read the title-page; "'Proceedings of the British Engineering Society for the Year 1848.' So, you have finally come to light, old hide-and-seek! Sir Peter Oglebay will be pleased. From Brussels, of all the unlikely—Well, well, I must remember to cancel the advertisement in the 'Athenaeum.'"