Guy looked at the few objects of interest in the outer office, at the original drawings of wrappers and frontispieces, at the signed photograph of a moderately distinguished poet of the 'nineties, at a depressing accumulation of still unsold volumes. The window was grimy, and the raindrops seemed from inside to smear it as tears smudge the face of a dirty child. The clerk pored over a ledger, and from the grey afternoon the cries of the porters in Covent Garden came drearily in. At last a bell sounded, and the clerk invited him 'to step this way,' lifting the counter and pointing up a narrow staircase beyond a glass door. Guy went up and at last entered Mr. Worrall's private office. The publisher was a short fat man with a bald and curiously conical head, reminding Guy very much of a dentist in his manner. The poet sat down and immediately caught in his first survey Mr. William Worrall's caricature by Max Beerbohm. As a result of this observation Guy throughout the interview could only perceive Mr. Worrall as the caricaturist had perceived him, and like a shape in a dream his head all the time grew more and more conical, until it seemed as if it would soon bore a hole in the festooned ceiling. "Well, Mr. Hazlewood," said the publisher referring as he spoke to Guy's card with what Guy thought was a rather unnecessary implication of oblivion. "Well, Mr. Hazlewood, my reader reports very favourably on your poems, and there seems no reason why I should not publish them." Guy bowed. "No reason at all," Mr. Worrall continued. Then making a gothic arch with his fingers and looking up at the ceiling, he added: "Though, of course, there will be a risk. However, my reader's opinion was certainly favourable." And so it ought to be, thought Guy, for a guinea. "And I don't think," Mr. Worrall went on, "that in the circumstances we need be very much afraid. Have you any ideas about the price at which your sheaf, your little harvest is to be offered to the public?" "Oh, I should leave that to you," said Guy hastily. "Precisely," said the publisher. "Yes, I think perhaps we might say five shillings or ... of course it might be done in paper in the Covent Garden Series of Modern English Poets. Yes, the reader speaks most highly of your work. You know the Covent Garden series of modern poets? In paper at half-a-crown net?" "I should be very proud to appear in such a series," said Guy pleasantly. The series as a matter of fact was one that could do him no discredit. "It's a charming idea, isn't it?" said Mr. Worrall, fondling one of the set that lay on his desk. "Every five volumes has its own floral emblem. We've done The Rose, The Lily, The Violet. Let me see, your poems are mostly about London, aren't they?" "No, there isn't one about London," Guy pointed out rather sharply.