"They stared at me, I can tell you. 🔊 I attracted a great deal of attention." 🔊 At last he had done that! 🔊 "I think I rather scared them. 🔊 They moved away whenever I came near. 🔊 They followed me about, at a distance, wherever I went. 🔊 The men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to make inquiries." 🔊
"What did you do when you arrived?" 🔊
Well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course,—to the S volumes,—and had stood long before SN-SOF, unable to take this volume out of the shelf because his heart was beating so. 🔊 At first, he said, he wasn't disappointed; he only thought there was some new arrangement. 🔊 He went to the middle desk and asked where the catalogue of twentieth-century books was kept. 🔊 He gathered that there was still only one catalogue. 🔊 Again he looked up his name, stared at the three little pasted slips he had known so well. 🔊 Then he went and sat down for a long time. 🔊
"And then," he droned, "I looked up the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' and some encyclopedias. 🔊 I went back to the middle desk and asked what was the best modern book on late nineteenth-century literature. 🔊 They told me Mr. T. K. Nupton's book was considered the best. 🔊 I looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form for it. 🔊 It was brought to me. 🔊 My name wasn't in the index, but—yes!" he said with a sudden change of tone, "that's what I'd forgotten. 🔊 Where's that bit of paper? Give it me back." 🔊