"No, no!" the little girl shouted, angrily. "It ain't a book. It's a thing to beat eggs with. Mother said to come here and get it."
"Well, she's sent you to the wrong place, little girl. You want to go to a hardware-store," the young lady argued.
"Ain't this No. 1232?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is the right place. Mother said to go to 1232. I guess she knows. She's an old customer."
"The Egg-beater! The Egg-beater!" the blithe young novelist to whom Erlcort told the story repeated. He was still happy in his original success as a best-seller, and he had come to the Critical Bookstore to spy out the stock and see whether his last novel was in it; but though it was not, he joyously extended an acquaintance with Erlcort which had begun elsewhere. "The Egg-beater? What a splendid title for a story of adventure! Keep the secret of its applicability to the last word, or perhaps never reveal it at all, and leave the reader worrying. That's one way; makes him go and talk about the book to all the girls he knows and get them guessing. Best ad. in the world. The Egg-beater! Doesn't it suggest desert islands and penguins' nests in the rocks? Fellow and girl shipwrecked, and girl wants to make an omelette after they've got sick of plain eggs, and can't for want of an egg-beater. Heigh? He invents one—makes it out of some wire that floats off from the wreck. See? When they are rescued, she brings it away, and doesn't let him know it till their Iron Wedding Day. They keep it over his study fireplace always."
This author was the first to stretch his legs before Erlcort's fire from his seat on one of the reproductions. He could not say enough of the beauty of the place, and he asked if he might sit there and watch for the old codger's old customers coming to buy hardware. There might be copy in it.
But the old customers did not come so often as he hoped and Erlcort feared. Instead there came bona fide book-buyers, who asked some for a book and some for a particular book. The first were not satisfied with the books that Erlcort or his acting saleslady recommended, and went away without buying. The last were indignant at not finding what they wanted in Erlcort's selection.
"Why don't you stock it?" they demanded.
"Because I don't think it's worth reading."