"Oh I couldn't!" he exclaimed closing the book gently and holding it close. "It-it leaves a terrible gap in your collection."
He fiddled with the leaning books in the gap of the missing one. He slipped the book back in with a shake of his head.
"No-no, this is supposed to be here. Though I wouldn't mind coming back to read it," he said.
And then he listened to her story with a sympathetic tilt of his head. He knew the pain of losing someone so close. And he could feel her emotion mix with his own; it was palpable and thick. It was something he was familiar with all too well.
He clasped his hands together as his throat grew tight in the revelation of this man called Errol being returned.
"That's a wonderful thing, Beauty. You are very lucky," he said, openly. If he could, he would have smiled at her fortune.