his first appearance as a Junior Journalist. And he might well feel a
little diffident about it; for, though some of the members knew him,
he could not honestly say he knew any of them, except Rankin (of _The
Planet_) who possibly mightn't, and Jewdwine who certainly wouldn't,
be there. But the plunge had to be made some time; he might as well
make it now.

From the threshold of the Junior Journalists' he looked back across
the side street, as across a gulf, at the place he had just left. His
eyes moved from the jutting sign-board at the corner, announcing
_Gentlemen's Libraries Purchased_, to the legend that ran above the
window, blazoned in letters of gold:

_Isaac Rickman: New & Second-Hand Bookseller._

His connexion with it was by no means casual and temporary. It was his
father's shop.




CHAPTER V


The little booksellers of the Strand, in their death struggle against
Rickman's, never cursed that house more heartily than did the Junior
Journalists, in their friendly, shabby little den, smelling of old
leather and tobacco and the town. They complained that it cut on
two-thirds of the light from the front windows of the reading-room.
Not that any of them were ever known to read in it. They used it