"You want to give it to me? Well, that's something that never happened to me on this line before. I guess my wife will like it. I—1009th Street! Change for East Brooklyn and the Bronx!" the guard shouted, and he let Erlcort out of the car, the very first of the tide that spilled itself forth at the station. He called after him, "Do as much for you some time."
The incident first amused Erlcort, and then it began to trouble him; but he appeased his remorse by toying with his old notion of a critical bookstore. His mind was still at play with it when he stopped at the bell-pull of an elderly girl of his acquaintance who had a studio ten stories above, and the habit of giving him afternoon tea in it if he called there about five o'clock. She had her ugly painting-apron still on, and her thumb through the hole in her palette, when she opened her door to him.
"Too soon?" he asked.
She answered as well as she could with the brush held horizontally in her mouth while she glared inhospitably at him. "Well, not much," and then she let him in, and went and lighted her spirit-lamp.
He began at once to tell her of his strange experience, and went on till she said: "Well, there's your tea. I don't know what you've been driving at, but I suppose you do. Is it the old thing?"
"It's my critical bookstore, if that's what you call the old thing."
"Oh! That! I thought it had failed 'way back in the dark ages."
"The dark ages are not back, please; they're all 'round, and you know very well that my critical bookstore has never been tried yet. But tell me one thing: should you wish to live with a picture, even for a few hours, which had been painted by an old lady of seventy who had never tried to paint before?"
"If I intended to go crazy, yes. What has all that got to do with it?"
"That's the joint commendation of the publisher and the kind little blonde who united to sell me the book I just gave to that poor Subway trainman. Do you ever buy a new book?"