n it.

The shop front to the right paid testimony to the standing of Fortune,
East and Sabre in their capacity as educational and ecclesiastical book
publishers and binders. One window gave chastely, on purple velvet, not
more than two or at most three exquisitely wrought Bibles and prayer
books for lectern and altar; the other showed severely, on green baize,
school textbooks of every subject and degree grouped about superbly
handsome prize volumes in blue calf displaying the classic arms of
Tidborough School.

Public entrance to these premises was gained by doors of the central
shop only. It was considered proper and in keeping with the times to
have window displays, but it was considered improper and out of keeping
with the traditions of Fortune, East and Sabre to present more than the
extreme minimum of shoppish appearance. You entered therefore by but one
door, which was, moreover, not a shop door but a church door and one of
the several models which Fortune, East and Sabre had designed and
executed; you entered, between the vestments and the lecterns, not a
shop but a vestry; and you passed, on the left, not into a shop but into
a classroom, and on the right not into a shop but into a book-lined
study.

It is said that if you loitered long enough in Fortune, East and Sabre's
you would meet every dignitary of the Church and of education in the
United Kingdom; and it was added that you would not have to wait long.

Fortune, East and Sabre, The Precincts, Tidborough.

II

Maintaining the unshoplike character of the ground-floor rooms upon
which the plate-glass windows looked, virtually no business, in the
vulgar form of buying and selling, was carried on in the vestry, in the
classroom or in the book-lined study. Many modern and entirely worthy
businesses are conducted under the strident banner of "Cash Only."
Fortune, East and Sabre's did not know the word cash. One would as soon
look for or expect a till, to say nothing of one of those terrific
machines known as cash registers, in the vestry, the classroom or the
study as one would look for a lectern or an adjustable school desk in a
beer-house. "Credit only" was here the principle, and accounts were
rendered, never on delivery, but quarterly. One does not, after all, pay
for a font out of one's trouser pocket and carry it off under one's arm;
nor for a school desk out of a purse and bear it away on one's head.
Only in the book-lined study were trifling tr