It was then that a brain wave swept over me.
"If you will tell me the nearest telephone," I said, "I will arrange it through the hall porter at the club," and I did so.
It was in the course of our conversation on the way back from this telephoning errand, on which Ben had accompanied me, that her future was practically decided: she would herself become the London representative of the Mrs. Fred Lintots of the country. Many other duties in excess of this one came to be hers, as we shall see; but the germ of her activities in the little business in which I have the honour to be an obscure partner was the difficulty set up by the absent shaker. The Apostle James in his Epistle asks us to behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth, and the minute origins of deeds that shape our ends have always been a source of interest to me; but I never thought that the lack of such an article as a cocktail-shaker in Devonshire would lead either to my speculating in business with my old playmate's youngest daughter or drive me to become its historian. And here, although it is outside the scope proper of this narrative, it may be stated, as yet another example of the caprices of this illogical world, that when the American arrived he was found to be a life-abstainer.
Things on this planet are always happening at the same time; and it must follow (since it is only through meetings that the machinery is assembled which makes the world continue to exist) that, although parallels or divergences are the rule, now and then persons simultaneously start out upon lines of action which in due course arrive at the same point. It is fortunate that those persons are unaware of what the gods are doing with them. Life is not such fun that we can afford to dispense with the unexpected.
It chanced that at the very moment when Ben and I were discussing Mrs. Lintot's scheme at Dartmoor, Mr. John Harford, in the garden of Laycock Manor, was informing his startled mother that he had decided to chuck the law and open a second-hand book shop.
Mrs. Harford was properly horrified. The Harfords so far had been able to avoid trade.
"But this isn't trade," said her son. "This is a lark."
"Do you call it a lark," his mother inquired, "to be covered with dust--for there's nothing so dusty as old books, and very likely to catch horrible diseases--for there are no germ carriers like old books either? And"--she went on, before he could reply--"do you call it a lark to have to bargain with customers, because no one ever gives as much for an old book as it is marked? Even I know that. That's not my notion of a lark, anyway. And you'll have to start early, and leave late, and your health will go, and your nice looks, and all the money spent on your legal career will be wasted, and all the money you are going to put into this absurd business will be wasted too. By the way, where is that money coming from?"