The wretched cutting, as I knew by inspired prevision, related to the sale of a first folio, which, after spirited bidding, was knocked down for £987. The pathetic figure before me had read the paper, had dimly remembered that among her dead husband's books was an old Shakespeare, and at last, with a beating heart, had found it and seen infinite possibilities of debt-paying and comfort before her. What was I to do? She was manifestly so truthful, and the hope dying out of her poor eager face left it so wan and wintry. A second-hand bookseller, I suppose, having chosen to be a second-hand bookseller and to live by his choice, has a short way with such clients. I know he must have. But I wondered what Mr. Bemerton would do, that is, if Miss Wagstaff permitted him to come on in that scene at all. The disparity between anything that I could give her and the sum she was expecting was clearly so immense that I did nothing at all. I merely said I was very sorry, and bowed her out, and returned once more to Walter Pope. "May none whom I love to so great riches rise As to slight their acquaintance and their old friends despise; So low or so high may none of them be As to move either pity or envy in me.... To outlive my senses may it not be my fate To be blind, to be deaf, to know nothing at all; But rather let death come before 'tis so late, And while there's some sap in it may my tree fall...." Here a little girl from a neighbouring shop ran in to ask for two sixpences for a shilling. "You won't buy a nice set of Dickens, too?" I asked her, quite in the Wagstaffian manner, I thought. "Not to-day," she said gravely, with perfect London readiness; "but mother'll be wanting the washing-book bound in morocco next week." "With a courage undaunted may I face my last day, And when I am dead may the better sort say: In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow, He's gone, and not left behind him his fellow.... I care not whether under a turf or a stone, With any inscription upon it or none, If a thousand years hence, 'Here lies W.P.' Shall be read on my tomb; what is it to me?" Here entered a studious-looking youth who wished to know if I had a copy of _Hoffding's Psychology_. I said no; and almost immediately after came a commanding matron with her daughter for a complete set of Trollope for an invalid son who was going a voyage to the Cape. I said I was sorry, but I could not tell whether I had one or not: I was not the real bookseller, and knew nothing of the stock. "I call it disgraceful," said the lady. "Mismanagement on all sides. We've only just been to the Stores, and failed to get a pocket sextant. I can't think what's coming to London. Where are the standard novels kept in this shop?" she asked sternly. "I have no idea," I replied. "Let's hunt for them together."