.. and, so wondering, he was asleep.
And then, on the fourth day, something happened.
It was growing late, and Peter underneath the gas jet was buried in Mr.
Pope's Homer. A knock on the door and the postman entered with the letters.
As a rule Herr Gottfried took them, but on this afternoon he had left the
shop in Peter's hands for half an hour whilst he went out to see a friend.
Peter took the letters and immediately the letter on the top of the pile
(Mr. Zanti's post was always a large one) set his heart thumping. The
handwriting was the handwriting of Stephen. There could be no doubt about
it, no possible doubt. Peter had seen that writing many times and he had
always kept the letter that Stephen had written to him when he first went
to Dawson's. To other eyes it might seem an ordinary enough hand--rough and
uneducated and sprawling--anybody's hand, but Peter knew that there could
be no mistake.
The sight of the letter as it lay there on the counter swept away the shop,
the books, London--he sat looking at it with a longing, stronger than any
longing that he had ever known, to see the writer again. He lived once more
through that night on the farm--perhaps at that moment he felt suddenly his
loneliness, here in this huge and tempestuous London, here in this dark
bookshop with so many people going in or out. He rubbed the sleeves of his
blue serge suit because they made him feel like Treliss, and he sat, with
eyes staring into the dark, thinking of Stephen.
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