"Good ones? It's a lot, isn't it? I didn't suppose there were so many."
"Well, to fill our shelves I shall have to order about a thousand of each."
"You'll never sell them in the world! You'll be ruined."
"Oh no; the publishers will take them back."
"How nice of them! But that's only what painters have to do when the dealers can't sell their pictures."
A month off, the prospect was brilliant, and when the shelves and tables were filled and the sketches and bas-reliefs were stuck about and the little immoral mirrors were hung, the place was charming. The chairs and settles were all that could be asked; Margaret Green helped put them about; and he let her light the low fire on the hearth of the Franklin stove; he said he should not always burn hickory, but he had got twenty-four sticks for two dollars from an Italian in a cellar near by, and he meant to burn that much. She upbraided him for his extravagance while touching the match to the paper under the kindling; but October opened cold, and he needed the fire.
The enterprise seemed rather to mystify the neighborhood, and some old customers of the old codger's came in upon one fictitious errand and another to see about it, and went away without quite making it out. It was a bookstore, all right, they owned in conference, but what did he mean by "critical"?
The first bona fide buyer appeared in a little girl who could just get her chin on the counter, and who asked for an egg-beater. Erlcort had begun with only one assistant, the young lady who typed his letters and who said she guessed she could help him when she was not working. She leaned over and tried to understand the little girl, and then she called to Erlcort where he stood with his back to the fire and the morning paper open before his face.
"Mr. Erlcort, have we got a book called The Egg-beater?"
"The Egg-beater?" he echoed, letting his paper drop below his face.