"Goethe, Goethe, Goethe--he has never heard of him--never. Ah, these schools--I know them. Teach them nonsense--often enough--but any wisdom--never--"

"I'm very sorry--" said Peter humbly.

"And music?"

"I've had no opportunity--"

"But you would love it? Yes, I see that you would love it--it is in your eyes. Beethoven? No--later perhaps--then often enough--but Schubert! Ah, Schubert!" (Here the meat-pies arrived but Herr Gottfried did not see them). "Ah, the Unfinished! He shall hear that and he will have a new soul--And the songs! Gott in Himmel, the songs! There is a man I know, he will sing them to you. Die Mullerlieder. It is always water, the Flowers, the Sun and all the roses in the world ... ach! 'Dir Spinnerin'

'Meersstille' ... 'Meersstille'--yah, Homer, Schubert--meat and drink--Homer the meat-pie, Schubert the beer, but not this beer--no, Helles, beautiful Helles with the sun in it...."

He had forgotten Peter and Peter did not understand anything that he said, but he sat there with his eyes wide open and felt assured that it was all very useful to him and very important. The inferno continued around them, the air grew thicker with smoke, a barrel-organ began to play at the door, draughts and dominoes rattled against the long wooden tables....

Ah! this was, indeed, London.

Peter was so greatly moved that his hunger left him and it was with difficulty that the meat-pie was finished.

IV

During the three days that followed Peter learnt a very great deal about the bookshop. At night he still slept in Mr. Zanti's bedroom, but it was only a temporary pitching of tents during these days whilst he was a stranger and baffled by the noise and confusion.

Already his immediate surroundings had ceased to be a mystery. He had as it were taken them to himself and seated himself in the midst of them with surprising ease. Treliss, Scaw House, his father, had slipped back into an unintelligible distance. He felt that they still mattered to him and that the time would most certainly come when they would matter to him even more, but they were not of immediate concern. The memory of his mother was closer to him....

But in this discovery of London he was amazingly happy--happier than he had ever been in all his life, and younger too. There were a great many things that he wished to know, a great many questions that he wished to ask--but for the moment he was content to rest and to grasp what he could see.

In a day he seemed to understand the way that the books went, and not only that but even the places where the individual books were lodged. He did not, of course, know anything about the contents of the books, but their titles gave them, in his mind, human existence so that he thought of them as actual persons living in different parts of the shop. There was, for instance, the triumph of "Lady Audley's Secret." An old lady with a trembling voice and a very sharp pair of eyes wished for a secondhand copy.

"I've very sorry, Madame," began Herr Gottfried, "but I'm afraid we haven't..."

"I think--" said Peter timidly, and he climbed the little ladder and brought the book down from a misty corner. Herr Gottfried was indeed amazed at him--he said very little but he was certainly amazed.

Indeed, with the exception of the "meat-pie" interval he scarcely spoke throughout the day. Peter began to look forward to one o'clock for then the German, in the midst of the babel and the smoke, continued the educating progress, and even read Goethe's poetry aloud (translating it into the strangest English) and developed Peter's conception of Homer into an alluring and fascinating picture.

Of London itself during these days Peter saw nothing. At eight o'clock in the evening the shutters were put up by the disobedient James and the shop retired for the night. Herr Gottfried shuffled away to some hidden resting-place of his own and Peter found supper waiting for him in the room at the back. He ate this alone, for Mr. Zanti was not there and during these three days he was hardly visible at all. He was up in the morning before Peter was and he came to bed when Peter was already asleep. The boy was not, however, certain that his master was always away when he seemed to be. He appeared suddenly at the most surprising moments, smiling and cheerful as ever and with no sign of hurry about him. He always gave Peter a nod and a kind word and asked him how the books were going and patted him on the shoulder, but he was away almost as soon as he was there.

One strange thing was the number of people that came into the bookshop with no intention whatever of having anything to do with the books.

Indeed they paid no heed to the bookshop, and after flinging a word at Herr Gottfried, they would pass straight into the room beyond and as far as Peter could see, never came out again.

The magnificently-dressed gentleman, called by Herr Gottfried "Herr Signor," was one of these persons.

However, Peter, happy enough in the excitement of the present, asking no questions and only at night, before he fell asleep, lying on his sofa, listening to the sounds in the street below him, watching the reflections of the gas light flung up by the street lamps on to the walls of his room, he would wonder ... and, so wondering, he was asleep.

And then, on the fourth day, something happened.

It was growing late, and Peter underneath the gas jet was buried in Mr. Pope's Homer. A knock on the door and the postman entered with the letters. As a rule Herr Gottfried took them, but on this afternoon he had left the shop in Peter's hands for half an hour whilst he went out to see a friend. Peter took the letters and immediately the letter on the top of the pile (Mr. Zanti's post was always a large one) set his heart thumping. The handwriting was the handwriting of Stephen. There could be no doubt about it, no possible doubt. Peter had seen that writing many times and he had always kept the letter that Stephen had written to him when he first went to Dawson's. To other eyes it might seem an ordinary enough hand--rough and uneducated and sprawling--anybody's hand, but Peter knew that there could be no mistake.

The sight of the letter as it lay there on the counter swept away the shop, the books, London--he sat looking at it with a longing, stronger than any longing that he had ever known, to see the writer again. He lived once more through that night on the farm--perhaps at that moment he felt suddenly his loneliness, here in this huge and tempestuous London, here in this dark bookshop with so many people going in or out.

He rubbed the sleeves of his blue serge suit because they made him feel like Treliss, and he sat, with eyes staring into the dark, thinking of Stephen.

That evening, just as he was going up to bed, Mr. Zanti came in and greeted him with his accustomed cheerfulness.

"Going to bed, Peter? Ah, good boy."

Peter stopped, hesitating, by the door.

"Oh, I wonder--" he said and stopped.

"Yes?" said Mr. Zanti, looking at him.

"Oh--well--it's nothing--" Then he blurted out--"I saw a letter--I couldn't help it--a letter from Stephen this afternoon. They came when Herr Gottfried was out--and I wanted--I want dreadfully--to hear about him--if you could tell me--"

For an instant Mr. Zanti's large eyes closed until they seemed to be no larger than pin-points--then they opened again.

"Stephen--Stephen? Stephen what? What is it that the boy talks of?"

"You know--Stephen Brant--the man who first brought me to see you when I was quite a kid. I was--I always have been very fond of him. I should be so very glad--"

"Surely the boy is mad--what has come to you? Stephen Brant--yes I remember the man--but I have heard nothing for years and years--no, nothing. See, here are my afternoon's letters."

He took a bundle of letters out of his pocket and showed them to Peter.

The boy found the one in Stephen's handwriting.

"You may read it," said Mr. Zanti smiling. Peter read it. He could not understand it and it was signed "John Simmons" ... but it was certainly in Stephen's handwriting.

"Thank you," said Peter in rather a quivering voice and he turned away, gulping down his disappointment.

Mr. Zanti patted him on the shoulder.

"That's right, my boy. Ah, I expect you miss your friend. You will be lonely here, yes? Well--see--now that you have been here a few days perhaps it is time for you to find a place to live--and I have talked wiz a friend of mine, a ver' good friend who 'as lived for many years in a 'ouse where 'e says there is a room that will just do for you--cheap, pleasant people ... yes? To-morrow 'e will show you the place. There you will 'ave friends--"

Peter smiled, thanked Mr. Zanti and went to bed. But his dreams were confused that night. It seemed to him that London was a huge room with closing walls, and that ever they came closer and closer and that he screamed for Stephen and they would not let Stephen come to him.

And bells were ringing, and Mr. Zanti, with a lighted candle in his hands, was creeping down those dark stairs that led to the kitchen, and he might have stopped those closing walls but he would not. Then suddenly Peter was running down the Sea Road above Treliss and the waves were sounding furiously below him--his father was there waiting for him sternly, at the road's end and Herr Gottfried with a Homer in one hand and his blue shoes in the other sat watching them out of his bright eyes. His father was waiting to kill him and Mrs. Pascoe was at his elbow. Peter screamed, the sweat was pouring off his forehead, his throat was tight with agony when suddenly by his side was old Frosted Moses, with his flowing beard. "It isn't life that matters," he was whispering in his old cracked voice, "but the courage that you bring to it."

The figures faded, the light grew broader and broader, and Peter woke to find Mr. Zanti, by the aid of a candle, climbing into bed.

But some time passed before he had courage to fall asleep again.

CHAPTER XII

BROCKETTS: ITS CHARACTER, AND ESPECIALLY MRS. BROCKETT

I

On the next afternoon about six o'clock, Mr. Zanti, accompanied by the languid and shabby gentleman whom Peter had noticed before, appeared in the shop.