on, we climbed in without further parley, and
were driven away amid cheers. We stopped the cab at a boot shop a little
past Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of place we wanted. It was
one of those overfed shops that the moment their shutters are taken down
in the morning disgorge their goods all round them. Boxes of boots stood
piled on the pavement or in the gutter opposite. Boots hung in festoons
about its doors and windows. Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine,
bearing bunches of black and brown boots. Inside, the shop was a bower
of boots. The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer
opening a new crate full of boots.

George raised his hat, and said "Good-morning."

The man did not even turn round. He struck me from the first as a
disagreeable man. He grunted something which might have been
"Good-morning," or might not, and went on with his work.

George said: "I have been recommended to your shop by my friend, Mr. X."

In response, the man should have said: "Mr. X. is a most worthy
gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend of
his."

What he did say was: "Don't know him; never heard of him."

This was disconcerting. The book gave three or four methods of buying
boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," as
being of all the most courtly. You talked a good deal with the
shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendship
and understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefully
into the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots,
"cheap and good." This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing
for the niceties of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one to
come to business with brutal directness. George abandoned "Mr. X," and
turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not a
happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to
any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled
as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positive
imbecilitiy. It ran:--"One has told me that you have here boots for
sale."

For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked at
us. He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice. He said:

"What d'ye think I keep boots for--to smell 'em?"

He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as they
proceed, their w