HEPPLESTALL’S By Harold Brighouse New York: Robert M. McBride & Company 1922 [Illustration: 0001] [Illustration: 0009] FOREWORD RUMMAGING at a bargain-counter, I came across an object which puzzled me, and, turning to the shopman, I asked him what it was. He took it up contemptuously. “That,” he said. “Dear me, I thought I’d put it in the dust-bin. It’s fit for nothing but destruction.” “And you call it?” I persisted. “I call it by its name,” he said. “It’s an outworn passion, and a pretty frayed one too. Look at that!” I watched him pull gently at the passion and it came apart like mildewed fabric. “There’s no interest in that,” he said. “That never led to a murder or a divorce, a feeble fellow like that. If it ever got as far as the First Offenders’ Court, I shall be surprised.” “Yet it looks old,” I said. “In its youth, perhaps--” He examined it more closely. “I don’t think it’s a love passion at all,” he said, shaking his head. “My suppliers are getting very careless.” “You wouldn’t care to give me their address?” I coaxed. He threw the passion down angrily. “This is a shop,” he said. “I’m here to sell, not to make presents of my trade secrets.” I apologized. “Of course,” I said, “I will always deal through you. And as to this passion, what is the price of that?” “I’m an honest man and to tell you the truth I’d rather put that in the dust-bin than sell it. It goes against the grain to be trading in goods that I know won’t satisfy.” I said things such as that I would take the risk, that I would not hold him responsible for any disappointment the passion might cause me and I ended by offering him sixpence. So taken was he by the generosity of this offer that he not only accepted it, but insisted on my taking, as discount, a piece of newspaper which, he said, would serve very well to wrap round the passion, pointing out, truthfully, that it was a cleanish piece of paper, neither stained, by nor stinking of fried fish.