The book trade was not a matter for high spiritual romance; it was simply the way they got their living, as honest a way as any other, taking it all round.

The shop was one thing, and his father was another.

In fact, so far from identifying them, he was inclined to pity his father as a fellow-victim of the tyranny and malignity of the shop.
But when in his right mind he had no grudge whatever against the shop.
He had been born over the shop, nursed behind the shop, and the shop had been his schoolroom ever since he could spell.

It was books found in the shop and studied in the shop that first opened his eyes to the glory of the world, as he sat on the step-ladder, reading his Shakespeare or puzzling out his first Greek by the light of a single gas-flare; and for the sake of these things he had a tender recollection of Paternoster Row.

It was to Rickman's that he owed his education.