CHAPTER VII.
Perhaps it was not to be wondered at if Mr.Rickman had not yet found himself.

There were, as he sorrowfully reflected, so many Mr.
Rickmans.
There was Mr.Rickman of the front shop and second-hand department, known as "our Mr.Rickman." The shop was proud of him; his appearance was supposed to give it a certain _cachet_.

He neither strutted nor grovelled; he moved about from shelf to shelf in an absent-minded scholarly manner.

He served you, not with obsequiousness, nor yet with condescension, but with a certain remoteness and abstraction, a noble apathy.

Though a bookseller, his literary conscience remained incorruptible.