never annihilated or denied.

_That_ actuality was not fugitive.




CHAPTER VII


Perhaps it was not to be wondered at if Mr. Rickman had not yet found
himself. There were, as he sorrowfully reflected, so many Mr.
Rickmans.

There was Mr. Rickman of the front shop and second-hand department,
known as "our Mr. Rickman." The shop was proud of him; his appearance
was supposed to give it a certain _cachet_. He neither strutted nor
grovelled; he moved about from shelf to shelf in an absent-minded
scholarly manner. He served you, not with obsequiousness, nor yet with
condescension, but with a certain remoteness and abstraction, a noble
apathy. Though a bookseller, his literary conscience remained
incorruptible. He would introduce you to his favourite authors with a
magnificent take-it-or-leave-it air, while an almost imperceptible
lifting of his eyebrows as he handed you _your_ favourite was a subtle
criticism of your taste. This method of conducting business was called
keeping up the tone of the establishment. The appearance and
disappearance of this person was timed and regulated by circumstances
beyond his own control, so that of necessity all the other Mr.
Rickmans were subject to him.