With a bunch of early violets in his buttonhole, neatly and correctly dressed from the crown of his hat to his patent boots, Mr. Harvey Grimm, one morning about a fortnight later, turned down the narrow street which led to his friend Aaron Rodd's office. He took a few steps and paused in surprise. A little crowd encumbered the pavement in front of him. There were at least half a dozen taxicabs waiting by the side of the pavement. A printer's van was busy unloading. A constant procession, consisting chiefly of elderly and middle-aged men, were entering and leaving the little book-shop. Waiting his turn, Harvey Grimm stepped in. The whole of the central table was taken up by great piles of a little paper-covered volume, recognisable at once as the Poetical Works of Stephen Cresswell, and as fast as the flow of customers could be served, they departed with one or more copies in their pockets. The young lady whose hair was more untidy than ever, and who wore a stupefied air, doled them out in doll-like and mechanical fashion. She had lost her air of superiority. She pointed no longer to the sketches upon the walls or the pottery beyond. She behaved like a dazed automaton. Now and then Harvey Grimm could hear her reply to enquiries. "There will be a cloth edition of Mr. Cresswell's works out in a few days," she said. "The printers have promised them by the end of the week." In the background were two very obvious newspaper men, waiting so far unsuccessfully to get in a word with her. Mr. Harvey Grimm elbowed his way by some means or other into the line, paid his eightpence and retired into the recesses of the little suite of rooms beyond for a moment's breathing-space. A rush of at least a dozen old gentlemen had made exit temporarily impossible. As he stood and watched the scene, he was conscious of a fashionably dressed young man lounging in an easy chair a few yards away. The young man suddenly arose. "My benefactor!" he cried. Harvey Grimm gripped his copy of poems tightly and held it up. "Pax!" he exclaimed. "I have one." The poet smiled wearily. He drew his erstwhile patron a little further back into the most retired portion of the premises. "Listen," he said, "this has been the most stupendous, the most colossal joke of the day. On the first night I sandbagged a wholesale provision merchant who admitted that he had never read my poems, and he wrote to _The Times_ the next morning. I made myself objectionable to seven others the following night. They, too, made various complaints. After that I retired--their description of my identity was becoming embarrassing." Mr. Harvey Grimm was a little puzzled. "But the thing has been going on right up till last night," he declared. "The papers for days have been a source of joy to me."