smoking, soiling
dishes and washing them, talking and listening to other people talk,
take up most of life anyway."

This theory rather pleased him, so he ran downstairs again to tell it
to Mrs. Mifflin.

"Go along and get that room fixed up," she said, "and don't try to palm
off any bogus doctrines on me so early in the morning. Housewives have
no time for philosophy after breakfast."

Roger thoroughly enjoyed himself in the task of preparing the
guest-room for the new assistant. It was a small chamber at the back
of the second storey, opening on to a narrow passage that connected
through a door with the gallery of the bookshop. Two small windows
commanded a view of the modest roofs of that quarter of Brooklyn, roofs
that conceal so many brave hearts, so many baby carriages, so many cups
of bad coffee, and so many cartons of the Chapman prunes.

"By the way," he called downstairs, "better have some of the prunes for
supper to-night, just as a compliment to Miss Chapman."

Mrs. Mifflin preserved a humorous silence.

Over these noncommittal summits the bright eye of the bookseller, as he
tacked up the freshly ironed muslin curtains Mrs. Mifflin had allotted,
could discern a glimpse of the bay and the leviathan ferries that link
Staten Island with civilization. "Just a touch of romance in the
outlook," he thought to himself. "It will suffice to keep a blasee
young girl aware of the excitements of existence."

The room, as might be expected in a house presided over by Helen
Mifflin, was in perfect order to receive any occupant, but Roger had
volunteered to psychologize it in such a fashion as (he thought) would
convey favourable influences to the misguided young spirit that was to
be its tenant. Incurable idealist, he had taken quite gravely his
responsibility as landlord and employer of Mr. Chapman's daughter. No
chambered nautilus was to have better opportunity to expand the tender
mansions of its soul.

Beside the bed was a bookshelf with a reading lamp. The problem Roger
was discussing was what books and pictures might be the best preachers
to this congregation of one. To Mrs. Mifflin's secret amusement he had
taken down the picture of Sir Galahad which he had once hung there,
because (as he had said) if Sir Galahad were living to-day he would be
a bookseller. "We don't want her feasting her imagination on young
Galahads," he had remarked at breakfast. "That way lies premature
matrimony. What I wa