"Eightpence," the girl interrupted, depositing one of the paper-covered volumes in his hand. "Perhaps your friend would like one, too. I can promise you that when you have read Cresswell's Spring Lyrics, you will find all Victorian poetry anæmic." Harvey Grimm handed a copy to his companion, laid down two shillings and pocketed the eightpence change a little diffidently. "You would perhaps like to look around," the young lady suggested. She vanished into an inner room. Almost at that moment the door leading into the street was violently opened, and a young man of somewhat surprising appearance abruptly entered. He was over six feet in height, he wore a flannel shirt and collar much the worse for wear, a brown tweed coat from which every button was missing, and through an old pair of patent boots came an unashamed and very evident toe. The two visitors stared at him in amazement. The young man's eyes, from the moment of his entrance, were fixed upon the paper volume which Harvey Grimm was carrying. "Sir," he enquired, "am I to conclude that you have purchased a copy--the copy of poems you hold in your hand?" "I have just done so," Harvey Grimm admitted, "also my friend." The young man pushed past him towards the inner room. "Bertha," he exclaimed loudly, "eightpence, please! You have sold two copies of my poems. The eightpence!" There was a momentary silence and then the clinking of coins. The young man reappeared and made for the door with an air of determination in his face. Harvey Grimm tapped him on the shoulder. "Sir," he said, "forgive me if I take a liberty, but am I right in presuming that you are the author of this volume?" "I am," was the prompt reply, "and I am going to have a drink." "One moment, if you please," his questioner begged. "This, you must remember, is an impertinent age. Modernity demands it. Are you not also hungry?" "Ravenous," Mr. Stephen Cresswell confessed, "but what can one do with eightpence?" "You will join my friend and myself," Harvey Grimm declared firmly. "We are going to take a chop." The young man's tongue seemed to wander around the outside of his lips. "A chop," he repeated absently. "At a neighbouring grill-room," Harvey Grimm went on. "Come, I have bought two copies of your poems. I have a claim for your consideration." "Do I understand," the young man asked, "that you will pay for the chop?" "That will be my privilege," was the prompt assertion. "You are doubtless mad," the poet observed, "but you are probably opulent. Let us hurry." They left the place and crossed the street, the young man in the middle. Aaron Rodd was speechless. His eyes seemed fascinated by the deficiencies of their new friend's toilet, a fact of which he himself seemed sublimely unconscious. Harvey Grimm, however, proceeded to make a delicate allusion to the matter. "Some little accident, I gather," he remarked, "has happened--forgive my noticing it--to your right shoe."