e her a wink--or as near a wink as a woman ever achieves (ask
the man who owns one).

"Whenever Mr. Mifflin feels very low in his mind about the business,"
she said, "he falls back on those highly idealized sentiments. He
knows that next to being a parson, he's got into the worst line there
is, and he tries bravely to conceal it from himself."

"I think it's too bad to give me away before Miss Titania," said Roger,
smiling, so Titania saw this was merely a family joke.

"Really truly," she protested, "I'm having a lovely time. I've been
learning all about Professor Latimer who wrote The Handle of Europe,
and all sorts of things. I've been afraid every minute that some
customer would come in and interrupt us."

"No fear of that," said Helen. "They're scarce in the early morning."
She went back to her kitchen.

"Well, Miss Titania," resumed Roger. "You see what I'm driving at. I
want to give people an entirely new idea about bookshops. The grain of
glory that I hope will cure both my fever and my lethargicness is my
conception of the bookstore as a power-house, a radiating place for
truth and beauty. I insist books are not absolutely dead things: they
are as lively as those fabulous dragons' teeth, and being sown up and
down, may chance to spring up armed men. How about Bernhardi? Some of
my Corn Cob friends tell me books are just merchandise. Pshaw!"

"I haven't read much of Bernard Shaw" said Titania.

"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out? They
follow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem. They know their
quarry! Look at that book The Education of Henry Adams! Just watch
the way it's hounding out thinking people this winter. And The Four
Horsemen--you can see it racing in the veins of the reading people.
It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its
career--it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and
MAKES you read it. There's a queer old book that's been chasing me for
years: The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq., it's called. I've
tried to escape it, but every now and then it sticks up its head
somewhere. It'll get me some day, and I'll be compelled to read it.
Ten Thousand a Year trailed me the same way until I surrendered. Words
can't describe the cunning of some books. You'll think you've shaken
them off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customer
will pop in and begin to talk, and you'll kn