They were all women, and it was nearly all women who frequented the Critical Bookstore, but in their multitude Margaret Green was not. He thought it the greater pity because she would have enjoyed many of them with him, and would have divined such as hoped the culture implicated by a critical bookstore would come off on them without great effort of their own; she would have known the sincere spirits, too, and could have helped direct their choice of the best where all was so good. He smiled to find that he was invoking her help, which he had no right to.
His longing had no effect upon her till deep in January, when the weather was engaged late one afternoon in keeping the promise of a January thaw in the form of the worst snow-storm of the winter. Then she came thumping with her umbrella-handle at his door as if, he divined, she were too stiff-handed or too package-laden to press the latch and let herself in, and she almost fell in, but saved herself by spilling on the floor some canvases and other things which she had been getting at the artist's-materials store near by. "Don't bother about them," she said, "but take me to the fire as fast as you can," and when she had turned from snow to rain and had dripped partially dry before the Franklin stove, she asked, "Where have you been all the time?"
"Waiting here for you," he answered.
"Well, you needn't. I wasn't going to come—or at least not till you sent for me, or said you wanted my advice."
"I don't want your advice now."
"I didn't come to give it. I just dropped in because if I hadn't I should have just dropped outside. How have you been getting along with your ridiculous critical bookstore?"
"Well, things are rather quiet with us just now, as the publishers say to the authors when they don't want to publish their books."
"Yes, I know that saying. Why didn't you go in for the holiday books?"
"How did you know I didn't?"
"Lots of people told me."