The Haunted Bookshop

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"There," said the host; "this is my cabinet, my chapel of ease. Take off your coat and sit down."

"Really," began Gilbert, "I'm afraid this is----"

"Nonsense! Now you sit down and commend your soul to Providence and the kitchen stove. I'll bustle round and get supper." Gilbert pulled out his pipe, and with a sense of elation prepared to enjoy an unusual evening. He was a young man of agreeable parts, amiable and sensitive. He knew his disadvantages in literary conversation, for he had gone to an excellent college where glee clubs and theatricals had left him little time for reading. But still he was a lover of good books, though he knew them chiefly by hearsay. He was twenty-five years old, employed as a copywriter by the Grey-Matter Advertising Agency.

The little room in which he found himself was plainly the bookseller's sanctum, and contained his own private library. Gilbert browsed along the shelves curiously. The volumes were mostly shabby and bruised; they had evidently been picked up one by one in the humble mangers of the second-hand vendor. They all showed marks of use and meditation.

Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men--a passion which, however, is commendable in those who feel themselves handicapped by a college career and a jewelled fraternity emblem. It suddenly struck him that it would be valuable to make a list of some of the titles in Mifflin's collection, as a suggestion for his own reading. He took out a memorandum book and began jotting down the books that intrigued him:

    The Works of Francis Thompson (3 vols.)
    Social History of Smoking: Apperson
    The Path to Rome: Hilaire Belloc
    The Book of Tea: Kakuzo
    Happy Thoughts: F. C. Burnand
    Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations
    Margaret Ogilvy: J. M. Barrie
    Confessions of a Thug: Taylor
    General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press
    The Morning's War: C . E. Montague
    The Spirit of Man: edited by Robert Bridges
    The Romany Rye: Borrow
    Poems: Emily Dickinson
    Poems: George Herbert
    The House of Cobwebs: George Gissing

So far had he got, and was beginning to say to himself that in the interests of Advertising (who is a jealous mistress) he had best call a halt, when his host entered the room, his small face eager, his eyes blue points of light.

"Come, Mr. Aubrey Gilbert!" he cried. "The meal is set. You want to wash your hands? Make haste then, this way: the eggs are hot and waiting."

The dining room into which the guest was conducted betrayed a feminine touch not visible in the smoke-dimmed quarters of shop and cabinet. At the windows were curtains of laughing chintz and pots of pink geranium. The table, under a drop-light in a flame-coloured silk screen, was brightly set with silver and blue china. In a cut-glass decanter sparkled a ruddy brown wine. The edged tool of Advertising felt his spirits undergo an unmistakable upward pressure.