“My God!” he said, “She keeps me so close to her the entire day running idiotic errands that this happens to be my first puff in six hours. What’s the world coming to, I ask you, when a feeble old lady in the milk-toast era can dictate to a man as to his personal vices. I happen to be unwilling to be so dictated to. Let’s see the book.” Merlin passed it to him tenderly and the young man, after opening it with a carelessness that gave a momentary jump to the book-dealer’s heart, ran through the pages with his thumb. “No illustrations, eh?” he commented. “Well, old boy, what’s it worth? Speak up! We’re willing to give you a fair price, though why I don’t know.” “One hundred dollars,” said Merlin with a frown. The young man gave a startled whistle. “Whew! Come on. You’re not dealing with somebody from the cornbelt. I happen to be a city-bred man and my grandmother happens to be a city-bred woman, though I’ll admit it’d take a special tax appropriation to keep her in repair. We’ll give you twenty-five dollars, and let me tell you that’s liberal. We’ve got books in our attic, up in our attic with my old play-things, that were written before the old boy that wrote this was born.” Merlin stiffened, expressing a rigid and meticulous horror. “Did your grandmother give you twenty-five dollars to buy this with?” “She did not. She gave me fifty, but she expects change. I know that old lady.” “You tell her,” said Merlin with dignity, “that she has missed a very great bargain.” “Give you forty,” urged the young man. “Come on now--be reasonable and don’t try to hold us up----” Merlin had wheeled around with the precious volume under his arm and was about to return it to its special drawer in his office when there was a sudden interruption. With unheard-of magnificence the front door burst rather than swung open, and admitted in the dark interior a regal apparition in black silk and fur which bore rapidly down upon him. The cigarette leaped from the fingers of the urban young man and he gave breath to an inadvertent “Damn!”--but it was upon Merlin that the entrance seemed to have the most remarkable and incongruous effect--so strong an effect that the greatest treasure of his shop slipped from his hand and joined the cigarette on the floor. Before him stood Caroline. She was an old woman, an old woman remarkably preserved, unusually handsome, unusually erect, but still an old woman. Her hair was a soft, beautiful white, elaborately dressed and jewelled; her face, faintly rouged à la grande dame, showed webs of wrinkles at the edges of her eyes and two deeper lines in the form of stanchions connected her nose with the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were dim, ill natured, and querulous.