Mrs. Tarbro-Smith, receiving a letter from the editor of MURRAY'S MAGAZINE, had learned at length that Clarence was not typical Iowa, and she had transferred her field of study to Kilo on his recommendation. She meant to spend the rest of the season there, and hoped Miss Sally would take her to board. She found that Miss Sally would be glad, indeed, to have her company, and Mrs. Smith did not think it necessary to mention that she was looking for local color and types. She was pleased when she heard that Eliph' Hewlitt, who had so interested her, was “working” Kilo.
As Eliph' Hewlitt walked toward the hotel he felt that another opportunity had been lost—thrown away—by his inability to avoid Jarby's Encyclopedia as a topic, and for one moment he came as near giving up Miss Sally as he ever came to giving up anything. In that moment he saw the simplicity of his courtship, as he had imagined it would be, resolve itself into a tangled affair, as all these new individualities entered into it. Instead of being a mere matter between himself and Miss Sally, it was involving men and women, one after the other. It seemed to become a fight between himself, a singer stranger in Kilo, and an endless chain of interested citizens. Already there was Pap Briggs, who hated book agents; the Colonel and Skinner, who hoped to win Miss Sally; Mrs. Smith, who would serve as a defense against Eliph's attacks; and, as he walked down the street, he seemed to see in every man, woman, and child, a possible ally of either the Colonel or Skinner. But he tucked his sample copy of Jarby's under his arm more securely, and braced up his courage. He even whistled as he approached the hotel, but, when he glanced up at the attorney's office and saw Toole and the Colonel with their head together, he stopped whistling. If Toole was going to take either side, Eliph' would have liked to claim him. Toole was a smart man.
Toole and the Colonel left Miss Sally's with the attorney well pleased, and his enigmatic smile rested on his face as he led the Colonel to his office. He handed him a chair, and made him take a cigar, and then turned and faced him.
“Now,” he said, “what are you going to do with those what-do-you-call-'ems?”
“Them fire-extinguishers?” said the Colonel, licking the cigar around and around before lighting it. “Well, I ain't had much time to think that over yet. A feller can't decide on a thing like that all at once. It ain't likely no one in Kilo would buy a fire-extinguisher like them, all nickel-plated, if they had their senses about 'em. 'Twouldn't be natural. I might raffle 'em off, only nobody'd be likely to buy chances on a fire-extinguisher. I might take 'em down to Jefferson, but I don't see as that would do much good, nobody'd be likely to buy fire-extinguishers off of me down there.”
“No,” said the attorney, turning to his table and looking over some papers, with an appearance of interest, “No, I guess not. I don't see that you can do much of anything with them, unless you use them for ornaments. It seems a pity that Miss Briggs didn't go to Skinner for advice about that box, instead of you, doesn't it?”
The Colonel stopped with a lighted match half way to his cigar.
“What do you mean?” he asked, red in the face. “Do you mean that puffy old beef-cutter's got more sense than what I have, young man?”
“Oh, no,” said the attorney, carelessly. “Not at all. I was just thinking that if Skinner HAD opened that box, and HAD found fire-extinguishers in it, it would have been a fine chance for him to say to Miss Briggs, 'Madam, I am building in this town an opera house, known as Skinner's Opera House. The safety of the people of Kilo demands fire-extinguishers in Skinner's Opera House. I will take those four nickel-plated appliances and install them in my opera house, and allow you ten dollars apiece for them, cash or meat.' But, of course,” continued the attorney innocently, “you can't do that; you haven't built an opera house.”
The Colonel's little eyes peered at the attorney, and they were filled with cunning. Across his hard mouth a smile crept and broadened until he had to lay his hand across it, it was so indecently wide and exultant.