"This is the original of 'Girlhood'," he explained. "Digby gave it to me. It'll be worth a lot some day."
I looked with interest at the neatly written sheets, thickly covered with a small, beautiful, and rather crabbed penmanship.
"Worth a lot!" I exclaimed. "Well, I should say so! Why the other day I was browsing round in a bookshop and I found a lot of his first editions marked at $15 each. It struck me as a very high price for I know I have seen them listed for three or four dollars in catalogues."
"Exorbitantly high," Dulcet said. "I'm afraid your bookseller is profiteering. I admire Digby as much as any one, but that is an artificial price. The firsts aren't rare enough to warrant any such price as that. Still, I'm glad to know about it as it's a sign of growing recognition. I remember the time when it was all I could do to get any editors to look at his things. I'll have to tell him about that, it will please him mightily."
We sat for a while chatting about this and that and then Dulcet got up and put on his hat.
"Look here, old man," he said. "You squat here and be comfortable while I run round to Digby. It won't take me more than a few minutes--he lives on Eighty-second Street. I'll be back right speedily, and we can go on with our talk." I heard him go down in the elevator, and then I refit my pipe, and picked out a book from one of his shelves. I remember that it was Brillat-Savarin's amusing "Gastronomy as a Fine Art". I smiled at finding this in Dulcet's library, for I knew that the agent rather prided himself on being something of a gourmet, and I was reading the essays of the jovial French epicure with a good deal of relish when the telephone rang. I went to it with that slight feeling of embarrassment one always has in answering someone else's phone.
"Hullo?" he said. "That you, Ben? Listen, I want you to come round to Digby's right away," and he gave the address.
Thinking he had arranged a chance for me to meet Digby (I had long wanted to do so), I felt hesitant about intruding; but he repeated his message rather sharply. "Please come at once," he said. "It's important." Again he gave the street number, made me promise to come immediately, and rang off.