"Suppose I could tell you a way to make them last about twice as long."
"H'm! If you can tell me how to make these people more careful with pencils, I'll be mighty glad to know it."
"Well, I'll show you," and here I put my sharpener on the counter. "You know," I said, "when a man sharpens a pencil what a lot of wood and lead he cuts away?"
"Cuts away? Why, here they hack 'em all to pieces! But what's that contraption?"
"I'll show you. Just lend me a pencil." He passed over a pencil that looked as if the wood at the end had been bitten off, instead of cut off.
Blenkhorn was watching my actions rather curiously. I put the pencil in the sharpener, gave it two or three turns, and out it came with the point nicely rounded and sharpened.
"You notice," I said, "that it didn't cut away any of the lead at all, only the wood."
"H'm," he returned, and then he walked away and came back with a half a dozen more pencils. "Let's see it sharpen some more."
"Go ahead, try it yourself, Mr. Blenkhorn."
I held the outfit firmly and he sharpened one after the other.