Roger looked dubious.  “I remember something in Weir of Hermiston about a girl being ‘an explosive engine,’” he said.  “But I don’t see that she can do any very great harm round here.  We’re both pretty well proof against shell shock.  The worst that could happen would be if she got hold of my private copy of Fireside Conversation in the Age of Queen Elizabeth.  Remind me to lock it up somewhere, will you?”

This secret masterpiece by Mark Twain was one of the bookseller’s treasures.  Not even Helen had ever been permitted to read it; and she had shrewdly judged that it was not in her line, for though she knew perfectly well where he kept it (together with his life insurance policy, some Liberty Bonds, an autograph letter from Charles Spencer Chaplin, and a snapshot of herself taken on their honeymoon) she had never made any attempt to examine it.

“Well,” said Helen; “Titania or no Titania, if the Corn Cobs want their chocolate cake to-night, I must get busy.  Take my suitcase upstairs like a good fellow.”

A gathering of booksellers is a pleasant sanhedrim to attend.  The members of this ancient craft bear mannerisms and earmarks just as definitely recognizable as those of the cloak and suit business or any other trade.  They are likely to be a little—­ shall we say—­worn at the bindings, as becomes men who have forsaken worldly profit to pursue a noble calling ill rewarded in cash.  They are possibly a trifle embittered, which is an excellent demeanour for mankind in the face of inscrutable heaven.  Long experience with publishers’ salesmen makes them suspicious of books praised between the courses of a heavy meal.

When a publisher’s salesman takes you out to dinner, it is not surprising if the conversation turns toward literature about the time the last of the peas are being harried about the plate.  But, as Jerry Gladfist says (he runs a shop up on Thirty-Eighth Street) the publishers’ salesmen supply a long-felt want, for they do now and then buy one a dinner the like of which no bookseller would otherwise be likely to commit.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Roger as his guests assembled in his little cabinet, “it’s a cold evening.  Pull up toward the fire.  Make free with the cider.  The cake’s on the table.  My wife came back from Boston specially to make it.”

“Here’s Mrs. Mifflin’s health!” said Mr. Chapman, a quiet little man who had a habit of listening to what he heard.  “I hope she doesn’t mind keeping the shop while we celebrate?”

“Not a bit,” said Roger.  “She enjoys it.”

“I see Tarzan of the Apes is running at the Gissing Street movie palace,” said Gladfist.  “Great stuff.  Have you seen it?”

“Not while I can still read The Jungle Book,” said Roger.

“You make me tired with that talk about literature,” cried Jerry.  “A book’s a book, even if Harold Bell Wright wrote it.”

“A book’s a book if you enjoy reading it,” amended Meredith, from a big Fifth Avenue bookstore.  “Lots of people enjoy Harold Bell Wright just as lots of people enjoy tripe.  Either of them would kill me.  But let’s be tolerant.”