It was so easy to buy things here that he was a trifle disturbed to find his flowing course interrupted by his own entire ignorance as to what kind of piano he wanted.  He looked at all they had in stock, and heard them played upon.  They differed greatly in price, and, so he fancied, almost as much in tone.  It discouraged him to note, however, that several of those he thought the finest in tone were among the very cheapest in the lot.  Pondering this, and staring in hopeless puzzlement from one to another of the big black shiny monsters, he suddenly thought of something.

“I would rather not decide for myself,” he said, “I know so little about it.  If you don’t mind, I will have a friend of mine, a skilled musician, step in and make a selection.  I have so much confidence in—­in her judgment.”  He added hurriedly, “It will involve only a day or two’s delay.”

The next moment he was sorry he had spoken.  What would they think when they saw the organist of the Catholic church come to pick out a piano for the Methodist parsonage?  And how could he decorously prefer the request to her to undertake this task?  He might not meet her again for ages, and to his provincial notions writing would have seemed out of the question.  And would it not be disagreeable to have her know that he was buying a piano by part payments?  Poor Alice’s dread of the washerwoman’s gossip occurred to him, at this, and he smiled in spite of himself.  Then all at once the difficulty vanished.  Of course it would come all right somehow.  Everything did.

He was on firmer ground, buying the materials for the new book, over on the stationery side.  His original intention had been to bestow this patronage upon the old bookseller, but these suavely smart people in “Thurston’s” had had the effect of putting him on his honor when they asked, “Would there be anything else?” and he had followed them unresistingly.

He indulged to the full his whim that everything entering into the construction of “Abraham” should be spick-and-span.  He watched with his own eyes a whole ream of broad glazed white paper being sliced down by the cutter into single sheets, and thrilled with a novel ecstasy as he laid his hand upon the spotless bulk, so wooingly did it invite him to begin.  He tried a score of pens before the right one came to hand.  When a box of these had been laid aside, with ink and pen-holders and a little bronze inkstand, he made a sign that the outfit was complete.  Or no—­there must be some blotting-paper.  He had always used those blotting-pads given away by insurance companies—­his congregations never failed to contain one or more agents, who had these to bestow by the armful—­but the book deserved a virgin blotter.