Straight off the door next morning, I said: "Noah Webster published his first dictionary in 1828." (I had done a bit of research.)
Wygate was, again, writing at his desk. Without looking up, he said, "That would have been more impressive had it come yesterday."
"Mr. Webster might have put off publishing to suit you—indeed, who wouldn’t try to suit you?—but could standardized spelling have withstood the delay?"
That got his attention. He glanced up with a half-snort. From anyone else, I would have guessed the snort to mean my joke did not amuse. In Wygate’s case, I thought it might have substituted for a laugh. You would think such a giant man should have a giant’s laugh, but I was to learn that such laughter was a pet peeve of Wygate’s.
I developed peeves of my own within the first few weeks of my job at Wygate’s Used Books. One of these was the way Wygate left his journal lying open on his desk, fluttering its tantalizing pages under my nose.
Wygate’s journal was a no-nonsense hardcover notebook. Colored an uncompromising russet-brown, it didn’t interest me much until I first saw his handwriting spread out on the deck, blatant and inescapable.
"MERRY LAUGHS TOO MUCH," Wygate had written.
 "Merry by name and nature," I scrawled beside it. If it’s a fight he wants… I thought. Obviously he had left it to be noticed, and it truly did not offend me. I might have expected it from that gentleman who called himself Wygate, though at the time I hoped he would have the grace to be ashamed of himself, or at least tuck his notebook away.
Later it again appeared, just as brazen, but next to my scribble I read a grudging "TOUCHÉ."  
He was actually carrying a conversation with me, inviting me to banter. I couldn’t believe it. I wrote, "If you stop leaving your journal out, I won’t use it."
Wygate never replied to that, but continued to leave it open. As long as I could, in good conscience, believe he did it deliberately, I would write back. In this way we began to learn about each other silently. (Both of us claimed to be taciturn; both of us may have had a secret weakness.)
His approach to business was unorthodox. For example, he hoarded. He had me shelve his favorite books near his desk, so I often caught him sneaking glances or whole volumes. I half-expected Wygate to glare and snap at the unwitting customer selecting his book from the master stash. However, though Wygate complained to me when the shop door closed, an approving smile hovered about his lips, commending the choice. He loved to share his stories, though goodness knew he was no storyteller himself.
What he was outside the store I didn’t know, but I suspect he had adventures, and sometimes they crossed into the world I lived in.
One of the earliest—and most romantic, beware—of these happened while he was out, so I was keeping shop alone when a man began slowly walking up and down the front of the bookstore. I could almost see the pounds signs in his eyes. I say "pound signs" rather than "dollar signs" because the man was clearly English. (My mother and I are Anglophiles, so I knew it even before he spoke.)
I’m not paranoid, but I hoped this man wouldn’t enter. My goodwill for Englishmen and English things is pleasantly general; this man’s calculating eyes gave me uncomfortably specific creeps.
He entered. In a way most patronizing, he neglected to give me any acknowledgment.
"May I help you?" I asked, not because I felt particularly helpful, but because curiosity and a desire to prove my manners better than Wygate’s got the better of me.
He turned and scanned me as if I were a grocery bag at checkout. "Do you have any Edith Nesbit books?" he said, almost as if rehearsing a part in a drama. He had a very posh accent.
"In the back, by the portrait of J.M. Barrie and the books by the same," I replied. I had arranged The Treasure Seekers there the day previous. I wondered if something in particular had excited those pound signs, or if they were a perpetual mark of malice, like his thin, sneering lips.
He nodded briskly and started to go up the stairs to the second floor, completely disregarding my instructions. "You can’t miss it," I wanted to call, pointing in the right direction with what would have been a smirk. But, still curious, I didn’t.
 Suddenly, the bell on the door clanged rather than tinkled, and another man ran past me and around the bookshelves so fast that I never got a look at him. I heard a dull thud, as if he had hit something while rounding a corner, and he reappeared, looking less dazed than righteously angry.
I was surprised to see such a look on such a face. This man was thin, tall, fair, and breathless. He had blue eyes—Irish blue, though his other features seemed English—and he seemed young to be capable of such storminess.
"Uncle Edwin!" he shouted, giving no heed to me as I minded my own business (that is, I didn’t interfere; but I listened, by which means I deciphered he was an Anglo-Irish mix).
The Englishman’s dark head stuck out over the railing of the second floor. "Seamus," he hissed, ducking out of vision.
The fair-haired fury strode to the foot of the stairs, one foot ready to mount. "What have you told Nuala?"
"Told her?" spat the Englishman. "I only suggest, dear boy." Haste, not menace, underlay in his words.
"I won’t let you use her, Uncle! Not like this, not after I told her I—"
"—you love her? Ha!" scoffed the voice.
The young man, probably Seamus, went crimson. He ran both his hands through his windswept hair, making it stuck out more crazily than ever. I wasn’t sure if the cause was pure rage, vexation, or… "Nuala agreed to marry me. We were happy. Why have you poisoned her against me?"
"Not here," the uncle said, as if through clenched teeth.
"You fed her lies and slander drop by drop," the blue-eyed man said with sudden intensity.
"Why would I do that?" snapped Edwin, coming halfway down the staircase.
"What is it you think Nuala can do for you?"
"It’s more a matter of what you will do for Nuala…" He trailed off suggestively.
Seamus went into a stream of words sounding to me vaguely like Celtic cursing. I thought I caught the words "What must I do?" spoken through his clenched teeth before the foreign swearing resumed.
The pound signs sharpened. The man to whom they belonged spoke in a clipped, cold rendition of the other’s language. As he did, fair-haired Seamus got whiter and whiter, with fury or fear. If the former, I prepared to bold beneath Wygate’s desk lest a claymore find its way into the fray and Seamus duel Edwin upon the moment.
O how I wished for Wygate’s return! And, yet… how exciting it all was!
Finally Seamus spoke again in English, with the voice of a cornered animal. "How long do I have?"
The Englishman pretended to ponder. "I shouldn’t say more than… Well, let’s simply say that time drains by. Tock, tock, tock…" For the second time, he trailed off suggestively. I never wanted to sock a man more.
Similarly, I clearly saw that Seamus wanted nothing more than to throttle Edwin there in Wygate’s Used Books. I almost cheered for him to follow through, or I would—I liked the idea of strangling him more that breaking his nose. But for whatever reasons (our hearts or our shoes, Dr. Seuss might say), neither of us laid a finger on the dangerous snake.
As the young man watched him leave, the leaned heavily on a bookcase as if he would sob. Instead, he squared his shoulders and followed.
I felt stripped of all worth when I saw the despair in his blue eyes.
**
The occurrence alarmed me, so I told Wygate every detail. He soothed my excitement: "Stop worrying." His classic stern tones eased me.
He seemed uninterested in what had gone on, shrugging when I asked him what he thought about it and whether we ought to do something. He merely said he’d keep a closer watch on the shop.
Ergo, I was reasonably surprised when he soon after took a month’s holiday, and closed it for that period, but relieved I wouldn’t have to mind it in his absence.
Two scant weeks after his return and the resumption of my duties, I saw a thick letter tucked into Wygate’s notebook. From across the store, I gave Wygate a look; he nodded slightly, which I took to mean I had his permission to read it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand anything but the last paragraph because the rest was written in Gaelic (at least, I believe so. I only had patience to look up three words). The lines I could read said this: "You are always fáilte [welcome] to our home for the immeasurable good you have done for us. If your lovely apprentice had not told you our plight, disaster could have taken us—all.
Eternal thanks to you and your àillidh cailín [shining girl],
    Mr. and Mrs. Seamus and Nuala Sheehan."
I never asked about it. I probably never will; some things are better and sweeter when guessed. Being called a shining girl was wonderful enough for me.