I shook my head and said, “He is a good friend of mine.”
“He’s fifty years old and a stock broker,” said the book agent.
That was perfectly true, so I took him into Ed’s office. I did not hear anything more from or about that book agent. But one evening some weeks later when I was going uptown I ran across him in a Sixth Avenue L train. He raised his hat very politely and I nodded back. He came over and asked me, “How do you do, Mr. Livingston? And how is Mr. Harding?”
“He’s well. Why do you ask?” I felt he was holding back a story.
“I sold him two thousand dollars’ worth of books that day you took me in to see him.”
“He never said a word to me about it,” I said.
“No; that kind doesn’t talk about it.”
“What kind doesn’t talk?”
“The kind that never makes mistakes on account of its being bad business to make them. That kind always knows what he wants and nobody can tell him different. That is the kind that’s educating my children and keeps my wife in good humor. You did me a good turn, Mr. Livingston. I expected it when I gave up the two hundred dollars you were so anxious to present to me.”
“And if Mr. Harding hadn’t given you an order?”