For your consideration: Bunter, on Lord Peter's behalf, trying to negotiate the purchase of a maddeningly rare first edition from the bookshop of A.Z. Fell & Co.
I am WHEEZING. This is a wonderful idea. Additional idea: while waiting for Aziraphale to “look in the back” (i.e. put the kettle on and wait for the customer to lose patience) Bunter finds a volume of photography that he wants for himself, and puts it on the counter. After a moment’s outrage, Aziraphale decides that he’s rather touched by the optimism.
Bunter continues to browse, for Bunter has a great gift for patience; the angel has met his match in the man who has known the waiting of war and who has kept patience with Lord Peter Wimsey. In doing so, he comes across a dirty little pile of ephemera. And having a professional distaste for dirt and disorder, and a personal curiosity about the neglected and underestimated, Bunter begins to look through them.
Aziraphale knows what these are. They are morale-boosting pamphlets (assorted), and comic magazines (which Aziraphale wonders if he ought not to prefer to the pamphlets), and song sheets. Aziraphale watches his customer’s face very closely. And being a principality, he also has the ability to read his customer’s emotions rather better than an ordinary human would, and this he finds more interesting still. At length, Bunter puts the last song sheet delicately back on top of the pile, and moves soft-footed away. Still he has not so much as glanced in the direction of the back room.
As Bunter continues to wander the shop, he begins, very softly, to hum. And Aziraphale, hearing the sweet and pleasing baritone, does not quite suppress a gasp. I am dreaming, Dear, of you, day by day. Dreaming when the skies are blue, when they're gray; When the silvery moonlight gleams, still I wander on in dreams, In a land of love, it seems, just with you... Aziraphale clears his throat, performs a minor miracle, and reappears with the first edition.
