"Oh, indeed!" The sarcastic customers were commonly ladies. "I thought you let the public judge of that!"
"There are bookstores where they do. This is a critical bookstore. I sell only the books that I think worth reading. If you had noticed my sign—"
"Oh!" the customer would say, and she, too, would go away without buying.
There were other ladies who came, links of the endless chain of volunteer readers who had tried to help Erlcort in making his selection, and he could see them slyly looking his stock over for the books they had praised to him. Mostly they went away without comment, but with heads held high in the offense which he felt even more than saw. One, indeed, did ask him why he had not stocked her chosen book, and he had to say, "Well, when I came to go through it carefully, I didn't think it quite—"
"But here is The Green Bay Tree, and The Biggest Toad in the Puddle, and—"
"I know. For one reason and another I thought them worth stocking."
Then another head went away high in the air, with its plumes quivering. One afternoon late a lady came flying in with all the marks, whatever they are, of transatlantic travel upon her.
"I'm just through the customs, and I've motored up here the first thing, even before I went home, to stop you from selling that book I recommended. It's dreadful; and, horrors! horrors! here it is by the hundreds! Oh, Mr. Erlcort! You mustn't sell that dreadful book! You see, I had skipped through it in my berth going out, and posted my letter the first thing; and just now, coming home, I found it in the ship's library and came on that frightful episode. You know! Where— How could you order it without reading it, on a mere say-so? It's utterly immoral!"
"I don't agree with you," Erlcort answered, dryly. "I consider that passage one of the finest in modern fiction—one of the most ennobling and illumining—"
"Ennobling!" The lady made a gesture of horror. "Very well! If that is your idea of a critical bookstore, all I've got to say is—"