Through the Postern Gate: A Romance in Seven DaysBarclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
General
Through the Postern Gate: A Romance in Seven Days
Barclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Love stories
Arrived at Liverpool Street station, they entered a four-wheeler, and
trundled slowly off to Cannon Street. Christobel had imagined
four-wheelers to be obsolete; but the Professor dismissed her
suggestion of a taxi, as being "a needlessly rapid mode of progression,
indubitably fraught with perpetual danger," and proceeded to hail the
sleepy and astonished driver of a four-wheeled cab.
(Oh, Boy dear, what would you have said to that four-wheeler--you dear
record-breaking, speed-limit-exceeding, astonishingly rapid Boy? That
ancient four-wheeler, trundling past the Bank of England, the Royal
Exchange, the Mansion House, up King William Street, and round into
Cannon Street, endlessly blocked, continually pulling up; then starting
on, only to be stopped again; and your Belovèd inside it, Boy dear,
looking out of the ramshackle old window, in a vain endeavour to see
something of the London you had planned to show her in your own
delightful extravagant way. Oh, Boy dear, keep out of this! It is not
your show. This four-wheeler has been hailed and engaged by the
Professor. The lady within is the bride of the Professor. Hands off,
Boy!)
They drew up, for a few minutes, outside a bookseller's in New Broad
Street, on the left-hand side, just after they had trundled into it--a
delightful little place, crammed, lined, almost carpeted, with books.
The Professor plunged in, upsetting a pile of magazines in his hasty
entrance through the narrow doorway. Here he always found precisely
the book he happened to be requiring for his latest research. With an
incoherent remark to the proprietor, who advanced to meet him, the
Professor became immediately absorbed, in a far corner of the shop,
oblivious of his cab, his bride, and his train. Christobel had
followed him, and stood, a dignified, but somewhat lonely figure, just
within the doorway. She had been to this shop with her father, during
his lifetime, on several occasions, and had since often written for
books. The bookseller came forward. He was a man possessed of the
useful faculty of remembering faces and the names appertaining to them.
Also he had cultivated the habit of taking an intelligent interest in
his customers. But he did not connect this beautiful waiting figure,
with the absorbed back of the Professor.
"What can I do for you to-day, Miss Charteris?" he inquired, with ready
courtesy.
Christobel started. "Nothing to-day, thank you, Mr. Taylor. But I am
much obliged to you for so often supplying my requirements by return of
post. And, by the way, you have an excellent memory. It is many years
since I came here last, with my father."
"Professor Charteris was one of my best customers," said the
bookseller, in an undertone of deferential sympathy. "I never knew a
finer judge of a book than he. If I may be allowed to say so, I deeply
deplored his loss, Miss Charteris."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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