d. Her father said she had been to a fashionable
school: that surely is a guarantee that the delicate tendrils of her
mind have never begun to sprout. I will test her (without her knowing
it) by the books I put here for her. By noting which of them she
responds to, I will know how to proceed. It might be worth while to
shut up the shop one day a week in order to give her some brief talks
on literature. Delightful! Let me see, a little series of talks on
the development of the English novel, beginning with Tom Jones--hum,
that would hardly do! Well, I have always longed to be a teacher, this
looks like a chance to begin. We might invite some of the neighbours
to send in their children once a week, and start a little school.
Causeries du lundi, in fact! Who knows I may yet be the Sainte Beuve
of Brooklyn."

Across his mind flashed a vision of newspaper clippings--"This
remarkable student of letters, who hides his brilliant parts under the
unassuming existence of a second-hand bookseller, is now recognized as
the----"

"Roger!" called Mrs. Mifflin from downstairs: "Front! someone wants to
know if you keep back numbers of Foamy Stories."

After he had thrown out the intruder, Roger returned to his meditation.
"This selection," he mused, "is of course only tentative. It is to act
as a preliminary test, to see what sort of thing interests her. First
of all, her name naturally suggests Shakespeare and the Elizabethans.
It's a remarkable name, Titania Chapman: there must be great virtue in
prunes! Let's begin with a volume of Christopher Marlowe. Then Keats,
I guess: every young person ought to shiver over St. Agnes' Eve on a
bright cold winter evening. Over Bemerton's, certainly, because it's a
bookshop story. Eugene Field's Tribune Primer to try out her sense of
humour. And Archy, by all means, for the same reason. I'll go down
and get the Archy scrapbook."

It should be explained that Roger was a keen admirer of Don Marquis,
the humourist of the New York Evening Sun. Mr. Marquis once lived in
Brooklyn, and the bookseller was never tired of saying that he was the
most eminent author who had graced the borough since the days of Walt
Whitman. Archy, the imaginary cockroach whom Mr. Marquis uses as a
vehicle for so much excellent fun, was a constant delight to Roger, and
he had kept a scrapbook of all Archy's clippings. This bulky tome he
now brought out from the grotto by his desk where his particular