Joe’s hand felt like two hands, and the pen was hard to hold. _Years of Danger_ went off the air and was followed at once by an oil company’s broadcast of a baseball game. An unnoticed base on balls rode down with him in the elevator; an unimportant three-bagger fell on deaf ears as he reached the street-level hall. He’d done it! He’d done it! Passers-by craned their necks to look back at him. Embarrassed, he lost himself in the Royal Street crowd. There was a shock of awakening as he came to the store with Thomas Carlin on the window. Suppose—He stopped on the crowded street and a man bumped into him from the rear. Suppose his father would not hear of it? Well—He went on slowly to the store. Black gleaming show-cases ran up the center of the polished floor; gleaming show-cases ran parallel with the two long walls. Immaculate shelves held immaculate stock. Clerks, busy with customers, gave him a swift, unobtrusive sign of greeting, and he wriggled his fingers in return. He liked the store—its brisk quiet, its atmosphere of unhurried alertness. He liked the flashing facets of light that glinted from the chrome parts of typewriters; he liked the smell, pungent and sweet, of ink and paper. He liked it all but—but not enough. Not the way he liked radio. Not the way radio burned him up. A clerk carried a package toward the wrapping-counter. “How’s the Thespian?” Joe grinned and moistened his lips. Suppose his father didn’t understand. Tom Carlin was at the telephone in the compact rear office, and the boy knew a moment of relief. At least he wouldn’t have to tell his father at once. In the deserted book department, Frank Fairchild, his father’s right-hand man, quietly checked through some papers. The book department had always been something of a disappointment. “Hello, Joe.” The man calmly clipped the papers together. “Been reading anything lately?” “No time,” said Joe. “A remarkably busy world,” Mr. Fairchild commented dryly. “Nobody has time for reading. And yet here”—a sweep of his hand took in the department—“here’s everything. Humor and pathos, the stories of great nations and great men, drama, and poetry and essays. You can take a book and travel to the end of the world. Romance and adventure. It’s all here. Have people forgotten the magic land of books?” “Why not remind them?” Joe asked. “How?” A woman entered the department and Mr. Fairchild went forward to meet her. Tom Carlin called from the office. “I’m leaving in a half-hour. We can go home together.”