for background. Harvey Grimm eyed these treasures appreciatively.
"This place pleases me," he announced. "It has an air of its own. We will spend a few minutes here."
The two men entered and looked about them, a little bewildered by their surroundings. They seemed to have stepped into a small and feminine sitting-room, the walls of which were hung with water-colours of unusual subjects and colouring. There was a little pile of paper-covered volumes upon the table. A young lady of sombre and uncertain appearance came forward, and Harvey Grimm promptly removed his hat.
"We have perhaps made a mistake?" he observed tentatively. "From the exterior appearance of your establishment, I gathered that we might possibly be able to procure here something unusual in the way of literature. In a small way I am a collector of old books."
"We are entirely modern here," the young woman replied. "I can show you hand-made pottery, or the water-colours of a young Futurist artist, or I can offer you the poetical works of one or two of our most modern poets. Second-hand books or objets d'art we do not deal in. We consider," she concluded, "that modernity, absolute modernity, is the proper cult."
Harvey Grimm fanned himself for a moment with his hat. His companion was gazing, with his mouth a little open, at a picture upon the wall which appeared to him to represent the bursting of a ripe tomato upon a crazy landscape.
"An impression of war," the young woman remarked, following his gaze. "A wonderful piece of work by a young Futurist painter."
Harvey Grimm studied it for a moment through his eyeglass, and coughed. He turned back to the table and picked up a paper-covered volume.
"Poetry," he murmured, "is one of my great solaces."
"Have you met with the work of Stephen Cresswell?" the young woman enquired, almost solemnly.
Harvey Grimm repeated the name several times.
"For the moment——" he confessed.
"Eightpence," the girl interrupted, depositing one of the paper-covered volumes in his hand. "Perhaps your friend would like one, too. I can promise you that when you have read Cresswell's Spring Lyrics, you will find all Victorian poetry anæmic."
Harvey Grimm handed a copy to his companion, laid down two shillings and pocketed the eightpence change a little diffidently.
"You would perhaps like to look around," the young lady suggested.
She vanished into an inner room. Almost at that moment the door leading into the street was violently opened, and a young man of somewhat surprising appearance abruptly entered. He was over six feet in height, he wore a flannel shirt and collar much the worse for wear, a brown tweed coat from which every button was missing, and through an old pair of patent boots came an unashamed and very evident toe. The two visitors stared at him in amazement. The young man's eyes, from the moment of his entrance, were fixed upon the paper volume which Harvey Grimm was carrying.
"Sir," he enquired, "am I to conclude that you have purchased a copy—the copy of poems you hold in your hand?"
"I have just done so," Harvey Grimm admitted, "also my friend."
The young man pushed past him towards the inner room.
"Bertha," he exclaimed loudly, "eightpence, please! You have sold two copies of my poems. The eightpence!"
There was a momentary silence and then the clinking of coins. The young man reappeared and made for the door with an air of determination in his face. Harvey Grimm tapped him on the shoulder.
"Sir," he said, "forgive me if I take a liberty, but am I right in presuming that you are the author of this volume?"
"I am," was the prompt reply, "and I am going to have a drink."
"One moment, if you please," his questioner begged. "This, you must remember, is an impertinent age. Modernity demands it. Are you not also hungry?"
"Ravenous," Mr. Stephen Cresswell confessed, "but what can one do with eightpence?"
"You will join my friend and myself," Harvey Grimm declared firmly. "We are going to take a chop."
The young man's tongue seemed to wander around the outside of his lips.
"A chop," he repeated absently.
"At a neighbouring grill-room," Harvey Grimm went on. "Come, I have bought two copies of your poems. I have a claim for your consideration."
"Do I understand," the young man asked, "that you will pay for the chop?"
"That will be my privilege," was the prompt assertion.
"You are doubtless mad," the poet observed, "but you are probably opulent. Let us hurry."
They left the place and crossed the street, the young man in the middle. Aaron Rodd was speechless. His eyes seemed fascinated by the deficiencies of their new friend's toilet, a fact of which he himself seemed sublimely unconscious. Harvey Grimm, however, proceeded to make a delicate allusion to the matter.
"Some little accident, I gather," he remarked, "has happened—forgive my noticing it—to your right shoe."
The poet glanced carelessly downwards.
"It occurred this morning," he sighed. "To tell you the truth, I had scarcely noticed it. There was a green streak in the sunrise. I hastened——"
Harvey Grimm had paused in front of a boot shop.
"This place," he said firmly, "will do as well as another."
"Why not?" the young man agreed, entering promptly, seating himself upon the nearest vacant chair and holding out his foot. "Something light," he begged. "You will observe that my foot is long and narrow."
The shopman withdrew the tattered remnants of shoes and stared in amazement at his prospective customer's bare feet. The latter held out his hand for a cigarette and tapped it against the side of Harvey Grimm's case.
"It appears to me," he continued, gazing at his mud-stained feet, "that I came out without socks. The sunrise again. However, it is a deficiency which I perceive that you are in a position to remedy."
He selected without embarrassment a pair of socks and shoes, and was perfectly willing to don a tie which they purchased from a small haberdasher's shop at the end of the street. That affair disposed of, however, he became quite firm.
"The affair of the chop——," he insisted.
"We are there," Harvey Grimm interrupted, leading him to an hotel grill-room.
The young man paused before the large, open grid and carefully indicated the chop which he considered suitable for his consumption. He then seated himself opposite his two friends and expressed himself in favour of a mixed vermouth.
"A very pleasing encounter, this," he declared, drawing the eightpence from his pocket and looking at it thoughtfully. "May I ask, sir, whether you are acquainted with my poems?"
"Not yet," Harvey Grimm confessed.
"Your
