ll, I've been _feeling_ rather peaked, 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