“Let’s see,” says he; “there’s folks around solicitin’ subscriptions for magazines. They must get p-p-paid somehow.”
“They do,” says I; “my aunt takes subscriptions, and she gits so much for every one she takes. They call it a commission, or somethin’ like that.”
“Wonder why we couldn’t work it ourselves,” says he. “Not reg’lar agents,” says he, “but some scheme to git a l-l-lot of folks int’rested in gittin’ subscribers for us. If we could git a woman’s missionary s-s-society to goin’ on it, it would s-stir things up a lot. Them wimmin, when they git set on anythin’, go after it all-fired hot.”
“How about the Ladies’ Lit’ry Circle,” says I, “and the Home Culture Club?”
“Binney,” says he, “that’s an idee. L-lemme think. Um! ... Have to git ’em to w-w-workin’ ag’in’ each other somehow. Git ’em into a s-squabble of some kind. That’d do it, sure. How m-many wimmin b’long to those things?”
“There’s eighteen in the Circle,” says I, “because ma b’longs, and they’re meetin’ at our house to-morrow. I know there’s eighteen, because ma was figgerin’ how much she’d have to have to feed ’em. She says two sandriches apiece would do for most clubs, but thirty-six never’d fill up the wimmin in hern. She says she wished she could find somethin’ stylish to put into those sandriches that didn’t taste good. Then, she says, she could brag about havin’ somethin’ special nice, and at the same time nobody’d be able to make hogs of theirselves eatin’ it.”
“Have her t-t-try p-p-perfumed soap,” says Mark. “That’s swell, but nobody’d g-gobble it much.”
“But,” says I, “I dunno how many’s in the Home Culture. I kin find out, though.”
I did. There was an even twenty in it.
Well, Mark he sat down and pinched his cheek awhile, and then he took to whittling, which showed plain he was going after it hard. He whittled up nigh half a cord of wood before he got it all figgered out to suit him, and then he says, “Binney, who’s boss of each of those clubs?”