Part 3 (1/2)

Henry shuffled his feet noisily, and plucked up courage to rap on the counter, for the market-clock had ceased its striking by quite a minute, and no one had witnessed his romantic punctuality.

In answer to the knocking there appeared from behind the part.i.tion a youngster of some twelve years, who seemed to have been disturbed in some pleasant but undutiful occupation. On seeing that the person at the counter was merely a youth, just old enough to make a boy wish to be his age, but not old enough to inspire him with respect, the youngster, without a word of inquiry or apology, stooped down and lifted on to the counter a little bull pup, which he stroked with all the pride of a fancier, challenging Henry with his eyes to produce its equal.

Loftily indifferent to the behaviour of the boy, and secretly wondering if Monte Cristo had ever been so absurdly received on any of the occasions when he opened a door as the clock struck the appointed hour of meeting, Henry said, with a touch of indignation in his voice:

”I am the new a.s.sistant, and I wish to see Mr. Griggs.”

The boy gave a whistle of surprise, and eyed Henry boldly. Hastily stowing away the pup in some secret receptacle under the counter, he proceeded to the side-door, taking a backward glance at the new a.s.sistant, and disclosing under his snub nose a very wide and smiling mouth.

”Shop!” bawled the lad, as he opened the door.

Without another word, and leaving the door ajar, he went and perched himself on a stool, from which position he brazenly surveyed the new a.s.sistant.

Henry waited, quailing somewhat under the searching gaze of this juvenile servitor in the temple of literature. He surveyed at leisure the walls so thickly stacked with dusty volumes, and wondered why the youngster was not cleaning them or arranging the bundles on the floor, instead of sitting on the stool swaying his legs idly.

How different it all was from what he had expected! The books were there and in abundance, yet they were heaped about more like potatoes in a greengrocer's than things worthy of respect. It was difficult to connect this youthful dog-fancier with literary pursuits, and Henry could only hope that Mr. Griggs in his person would make up for what his establishment had lost in contrast with his ideal picture of it.

It was some little time before the shuffle of slip-shod feet was heard behind the back-door. The new a.s.sistant grew expectant. The shuffle suggested the approach of the venerable book-lover himself. There was a pause, during which Henry's heart thumped against his bosom, and then a large and tousled head was thrust inquiringly beyond the door, in a way that suggested a desire to conceal the absence of a collar and tie.

The head belonged to Mr. Ephraim Griggs, dealer in second-hand books and prints.

”Oh, it's young Charles, is it?” said Mr. Griggs, displaying a little more of his person, and showing that he was in the act of drying his hands. ”Just come in here, will you?” he went on, jerking his head back towards the pa.s.sage. ”I want your advice.”

Wondering on what subject he might be capable of advising the veteran, he went through to the pa.s.sage, where Mr. Griggs, having finished with the towel, offered him a cold and flabby hand.

Henry felt tempted to laugh, and probably a little inclined to cry, when he stood before his employer, and found that his mental portrait of the man tallied in no particular with the person facing him.

There was little of the book-worm about Mr. Griggs. He did not even wear spectacles; an offence which Henry found hardest to forgive. Not so tall as Edward John, nor yet so stout, he was a long-bearded fellow, with a nasty habit of breathing heavily through his nose, as if that organ were clogged with dust from his books. As he stood before Henry he was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, and, judging by the latter, the garment as a whole was ready for the wash. His waistcoat was glossy with droppings of snuff; his trousers, Henry noticed, were very baggy at the knees and appeared to be a size too large for him; while his feet were encased in ragged carpet slippers.

Evidently Mr. Griggs was in some trouble, and while Henry was speculating as to what the cause of his anxiety might be, the learned bookseller said, somewhat anxiously, and in a thin, wheezy voice:

”Tell me, do you know anythink about poultry?”

”Poultry!” gasped Henry.

”Yes,” replied Mr. Griggs, with a solemnity which struck the new a.s.sistant as absurdly pathetic. ”Hens,” he explained further; ”my best one is down with croup or somethink o' the kind. Your father has taken a many prizes with his birds, and I thought you might know all about 'em.

I've never had great success with 'em myself. Come outside and tell me what you think.”

Without waiting for a reply, the bookseller shuffled through the pa.s.sage into a back-yard, and the youth followed as one in a dream.

The yard was almost entirely devoted to poultry, and if Mr. Griggs was an amateur at the pursuit, he had at least prepared for it in no mean way, three sides of the place being taken up with wired hen-runs and a wooden house for his stock. In a compartment by itself, gasping and choking, lay the object of the old man's solicitude.

”The finest layer I ever had,” he declared despondingly. ”An egg a day as reg'lar as clockwork. I'd rather lose two of the others.”

His sorrow deepened when Henry said that he had never seen a hen in that state before, and did not know what was wrong with it.

”Then I'll be forced to ask old John Shakespeare, the grocer, what to do; although I 'ate the man, and don't want to be beholden to him for anythink. But he's our champion breeder, and what must be, must be.”

Shakespeare, grocer, hens! Henry doubted seriously if his ears were doing their duty, but there was no mistaking the anxiety of Mr. Ephraim Griggs. He could not have been more perturbed if his wife had been dangerously ill. His wife? That reminded Henry that he had heard his father say Mrs. Griggs had been dead these many years. Perhaps that was why the bookseller was so untidy.