He indicated a row of handsome books—“Seven Weeks in the Sahara, seven dollars; Six Months in a Waggon, six-fifty net; Afternoons in an Oxcart, two volumes, four-thirty, with twenty off.”
“I think he has read those,” said Mrs. Rasselyer. “At least there are a good many at home that seem like that.”
“Oh, very possibly—but here, now, Among the Cannibals of Corfu—yes, that I think he has had—Among the—that, too, I think—but this I am certain he would like, just in this morning—Among the Monkeys of New Guinea—ten dollars, net.”
And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new books, apparently as numerous as the huge pile of Golden Dreams.
“Among the Monkeys,” he repeated, almost caressingly.
“It seems rather expensive,” said the lady.
“Oh, very much so—a most expensive book,” the manager repeated in a tone of enthusiasm. “You see, Mrs. Rasselyer, it’s the illustrations, actual photographs”—he ran the leaves over in his fingers—“of actual monkeys, taken with the camera—and the paper, you notice—in fact, madam, the book costs, the mere manufacture of it, nine dollars and ninety cents—of course we make no profit on it. But it’s a book we like to handle.”
Everybody likes to be taken into the details of technical business; and of course everybody likes to know that a bookseller is losing money. These, I realised, were two axioms in the methods of Mr. Sellyer.
So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer bought Among the Monkeys, and in another moment Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk to write down an address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing deeply as he showed the lady out of the door.
As he turned back to his counter his manner seemed much changed.