Page:The haunted bookshop.djvu/127

 entirely of two sentences, one of 26 lines and one of 59. What does it matter if Wordsworth wrote sentences almost as long as those of Walt Whitman or Mr. Will H. Hays, if only he wrote a great poem? Literary critics are queer birds. There's Professor Phelps of Yale, for instance. He publishes a book in 1918 and calls it The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century. To my way of thinking a book of that title oughtn't to be published until 2018. Then somebody will come along and ask you for a book of poems about a typewriter, and by and by you'll learn that what they want is Stevenson's Underwoods. Yes, it's a complicated life. Never argue with customers. Just give them the book they ought to have even if they don't know they want it."

They went outside the front door, and Roger lit his pipe. In the little area in front of the shop windows stood large empty boxes supported on trestles. "The first thing I always do——," he said.

"The first thing you'll both do is catch your death of cold," said Helen over his shoulder. "Titania, you run and get your fur. Roger, go and find your cap. With your bald head, you ought to know better!"

When they returned to the front door, Titania's blue eyes were sparkling above her soft tippet.