for Mr. Rickman entertained the most innocent
beliefs with regard to that club of his. He was not yet sure whether
it belonged to him or he to it; but in going to the Junior
Journalists' he conceived himself to be going into society. So extreme
was his illusion.

Mr. Rickman's place was in the shop and his home was in a boarding
house, and for years he had thought of belonging to that club; but
quite hopelessly, as of a thing beyond attainment. It had never
occurred to him that anything could come of those invasions of the
friendly young men. Yet this was what had come of them. He was
friends, under the rose, that is to say, over the counter, with Horace
Jewdwine of Lazarus College, Oxford. Jewdwine had proposed him on his
own merits, somebody else had seconded him (he supposed) on
Jewdwine's, and between them they had smuggled him in. This would be
his first appearance as a Junior Journalist. And he might well feel a
little diffident about it; for, though some of the members knew him,
he could not honestly say he knew any of them, except Rankin (of _The
Planet_) who possibly mightn't, and Jewdwine who certainly wouldn't,
be there. But the plunge had to be made some time; he might as well
make it now.

From the threshold of the Junior Journalists' he looked back across
the side street, as across a gulf, at the place he had just left. His
eyes moved from the jutting sign-board at the corner, announcing
_Gentlemen's Libraries Purchased_, to the legend that ran above the
window, blazoned in letters of gold:

_Isaac Rickman: New & Second-Hand Bookseller._

His connexion with it was by no means casual and temporary. It was his
father's shop.

CHAPTER V

The little booksellers of the Strand, in their death struggle against
Rickman's, never cursed that house more heartily than did the Junior
Journalists, in their friendly, shabby little den, smelling of old
leather and tobacco and the town. They complained that it cut on
two-thirds of the light from the front windows of the reading-room.
Not that any of them were ever known to read in it. They used it
chiefly as a place to talk in, for which purpose little illumination
was required.

To-night one of the windows in question was occupied by a small group
of talkers isolated from the rest. There was Mackinnon, of _The
Literary Observer_. There were the three wild young spirits of _The
Planet_, Stables, who had launched it with frightful impetus into
space (havi