“Corthell is full of crazy ideas anyhow,” Landry went on, still continuing to pass the books up to her. “He’s a good sort, and I like him well enough, but he’s the kind of man that gets up a reputation for being clever and artistic by running down the very one particular thing that everyone likes, and cracking up some book or picture or play that no one has ever heard of. Just let anything get popular once and Sheldon Corthell can’t speak of it without shuddering. But he’ll go over here to some Archer Avenue pawn shop, dig up an old brass stewpan, or coffeepot that some greasy old Russian Jew has chucked away, and he’ll stick it up in his studio and regularly kowtow to it, and talk about the ‘decadence of American industrial arts.’ I’ve heard him. I say it’s pure affectation, that’s what it is, pure affectation.”

But the bookcase meanwhile had been filling up, and now Laura remarked:

“No more, Landry. That’s all that will go here.”

She prepared to descend from the ladder. In filling the higher shelves she had mounted almost to the topmost step.