One day when all this was done, and Erlcort had begun ordering in a stock of such books as he had selected to start with, she said: "You're looking rather peakéd, aren't you?" "Well, I've been _feeling_ rather peakéd, until lately, keeping awake to read and read _after_ the volunteer readers." "You mean you've lost sleep?" "Something like that." "Well, you mustn't. How many books do you start with?" "About twenty-five." "Good ones? It's a lot, isn't it? I didn't suppose there were so many." "Well, to fill our shelves I shall have to order about a thousand of each." "You'll never sell them in the world! You'll be ruined." "Oh no; the publishers will take them back." "How nice of them! But that's only what painters have to do when the dealers can't sell their pictures." A month off, the prospect was brilliant, and when the shelves and tables were filled and the sketches and bas-reliefs were stuck about and the little immoral mirrors were hung, the place was charming. The chairs and settles were all that could be asked; Margaret Green helped put them about; and he let her light the low fire on the hearth of the Franklin stove; he said he should not always burn hickory, but he had got twenty-four sticks for two dollars from an Italian in a cellar near by, and he meant to burn that much. She upbraided him for his extravagance while touching the match to the paper under the kindling; but October opened cold, and he needed the fire. The enterprise seemed rather to mystify the neighborhood, and some old customers of the old codger's came in upon one fictitious errand and another to see about it, and went away without quite making it out. It was a bookstore, all right, they owned in conference, but what did he mean by "critical"? The first _bona fide_ buyer appeared in a little girl who could just get her chin on the counter, and who asked for an egg-beater. Erlcort had begun with only one assistant, the young lady who typed his letters and who said she guessed she could help him when she was not working. She leaned over and tried to understand the little girl, and then she called to Erlcort where he stood with his back to the fire and the morning paper open before his face. "Mr. Erlcort, have we got a book called _The Egg-beater_?" "_The Egg-beater?_" he echoed, letting his paper drop below his face. "No, no!" the little girl shouted, angrily. "It _ain't_ a book. It's a thing to beat eggs with. Mother said to come here and get it." "Well, she's sent you to the wrong place, little girl. You want to go to a hardware-store," the young lady argued. "Ain't this No. 1232?" "Yes." "Well, this is the _right_ place. Mother said to go to 1232. I guess she knows. She's an old customer."