"Well, I'll be sorry to lose the sale, but I can't promise delivery at any known date now."

"Perhaps not at all?"

"Perhaps."

The young man bowed his way out so quickly that Lucile was still in the shop.

"That," smiled Frank Morrow, "is R. Stanley Ramsey, Jr., a son of one of our richest men. He wanted 'The Compleat Angler.'"

He turned to his work as if he had been speaking of a mere trifle.

Lucile was overwhelmed. So he did have a customer who was impatient of waiting and might seek a copy elsewhere? Why, this Frank Morrow was a real sport! She found herself wanting more than ever to tell him everything and to assure him that the book would be on his desk in two hours' time. She considered.

But again the face of the child framed in a circle of light came before her. Again on the street at night in the clutches of a vile woman, she heard her say, "I won't steal. I'll die first."

Then with a sigh she tiptoed toward the door.

"By the way," Frank Morrow's voice startled her, "you live over at the university, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Mind doing me a favor?"

"Certainly not."

"The Silver-Barnard binderies are only two blocks from your station. You'll almost pass them. They bind books by hand; fine books, you know. I have two very valuable books which must be bound in leather. I'd hate to trust them to an ordinary messenger and I can't take them myself. Would you mind taking them along?"

"N--no," Lucile was all but overcome by this token of his confidence in her.

"Thanks."

He wrapped the two books carefully and handed them to her, adding, as he did so:

"Ask for Mr. Silver 

 Prev. P 31/99 next