If Winter Don't

Book Excerpt: ...harper had the assistance of the Reverend Noel Atall. Luke kept a set of these booklets, bound in lilac morocco, in his room at the office. He loved them. He was proud of them. He regarded them as his children, and would sit for hours patting them gently. As the issue of each booklet was limited to one hundred copies, and it was customary to present one of them with each order of £20 or upwards, some of them were out of print, and difficult to obtain. This had been enough to start the collectors. In book catalogues there would sometimes appear a complete set of the Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper booklets. And the price asked was gratifying. Luke fainted with joy the first time he saw this in the catalogue. At one time he had been in the habit of taking the booklet home in order to read it aloud to Mabel. He never did it now. It was hopeless. No insight. No sympathy. No appreciation. No anything. Blind and deaf to beauty. But she really was a good housekeeper...