“Mr. Hewlitt,” said Mrs. Smith. “Miss Sally Briggs of Kilo.”
“I'm glad to know you, Miss Briggs,” said Eliph' Hewlitt. “I hope we may become well acquainted. As I was sayin' to Mrs. Smith, I'm a book agent.”
For the chapter on Jarby's Encyclopedia that dealt with “Courtship—How to Win the Affections,” said that the first step necessary was to become well acquainted with the one whose affections it was desired to win. It was not Eliph' Hewlitt way to waste time when making a sale of Jarby's, and he felt that no more delay was necessary in disposing of his heart.
CHAPTER III. “How to Win the Affections”
Miss Sally glanced hurriedly around, seeking some retreat to which she could fly. Mrs. Smith, having introduced Eliph' Hewlitt, had turned away, and the other picnickers were gathered around the minister, looking over his shoulders at the copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia. Although she could have no idea, as yet, that Eliph' Hewlitt had decided to marry her, Miss Sally was afraid of him. She was a dainty little woman, with just a few gray hairs tucked out of sight under the brown ones, but although she was ordinarily able to hold her own, each year that was added to her life made her more afraid of book agents.
Time after time she had succumbed to the wiles of book agents. It made no difference how she received them, nor how she steeled her heart against their plausible words, she always ended buying whatever they had to sell, and after that it was a fight to get the money from her father with which to pay the installments. Pap Briggs objected to paying out money for anything, but he considered that about the most useless thing he could spend money for was a book. Whenever he heard there was a book agent in Kilo he acted like a hen when she sees a hawk in the sky, ready to pounce down upon her brood, and he pottered around and scolded and complained and warned Miss Sally to beware, and then in the end the book agent always made the sale, and Miss Sally felt as if she had committed seven or eight deadly sins, and it made her life miserable. Only a few months before she had fallen prey to a man who had sold her a set of Sir Walter Scott's Complete Works, two dollars down, and one dollar a month, and she felt that the work of urging the monthly dollar out of her father's pocket was all she could stand.
Why and how she bought books always remained a mystery to her; it is a mystery to many book buyers how they happen to buy books. Book agents seemed to have a mesmerizing effect on Miss Sally, as serpents daze birds before they devour them. The process applied between the time when she stated with the utmost positiveness that she did not want, and would not buy, a book, and the time, a few minutes later, when she signed her name to the agent's list of subscribers, was something she could not fathom.
And now she had been left face to face with a book agent, actually introduced to him, and her father still under monthly miseries on account of Sir Walter Scott's Complete Works.
“I don't want any books to-day,” said Miss Sally nervously, when she saw that she could not run away.