“'Dead?' I asks, her words seeming to imply her ma's having departed hence.
“'Oh, no,' she says, smiling. 'She's in the front room, talking. She has a very previous engagement with a gent, and can't break away.'
“'You'll do just as well,' I says, 'if not better. You have that intellectual look that I always spot on the genooine lover of reading matter.'
“'If you are gun to talk book, you better git right down to business and talk book' she says, 'because when I whoop up that stove to git supper, as I'm gun to soon, it's liable to git warm in this kitchen.'
“I took a look at the cooking apparatus, and decided that she knew what she was conversing about. I liked the way she jumped right into the fact that I had a few things to say about books, too. She was an up-and-coming sort, and that's my sort. It's up-and-comingness that has made the Kilo Hotel what it is.
“'All right, sister,' I says, 'this book is the famous “Wage of Sin.”'
“'No?” she exlamates. 'Not the “Wage of Sin”? The celebrated volume by our fellow Iowan, Mr. What's-his-name?'
“'The same book!' I says, glad to know its knowledge had passed far down the State. 'Price one-dollar-fifty per each. A gem of purest razorene. A rhymed compendium of wit, information, and highly moral so-forths. Ten thousand verses, printed on a new style rotating duplex press, and bound up in pale-gray calico. Let me quote you that sweet couplet about the flood:
“I hear the mother in her grief Imploring heaven for relief As up the mountain-side she drags Herself by mountain peaks and crags.”
“'When I wrote that—'