And then it was that Betty had put her hands to her hips, cocked her head impishly one side, and thrown her taunt at me: "Well, what have you to say now?"
CHAPTER XXVIII
GETTING NEW BUSINESS
The next day, I wrote to Hersom, the salesman for Bates & Hotchkin, and asked him to give me the names of one or two good firms from whom to buy toys. I had just mailed the letter when he came into the store.
He was a nice fellow, was Hersom, and I had found that, whenever I left anything to him, he gave me a square deal. Indeed, he had got so that he was almost one of the family when he got inside the place. He gave me the names of two New York concerns, the manager of one of which he said he knew personally, and to him he gave me a letter of introduction.
I decided that Betty and I would go to New York the next week and pick out a stock of toys. We would plunge on a hundred dollars' worth—perhaps a little more—and see what happened.
After I had found out a little about selling the Cincinnati pencil sharpener, with the aid of the selling manual which the company had given me, I had passed it on to Larsen, and he had studied it for a week or two, and then, one Thursday afternoon, he had gone calling on the business men of the town, other than the store-keepers. He sold only one sharpener the first afternoon, but he had a request for a pocketknife, which we delivered the next day. The next Thursday he went out again. To my surprise he didn't sell a single pencil sharpener, but he came back with an order for a Middle's razor and a stick of shaving soap, and also brought in eighteen safety razor blades to be sharpened, and two of the regular kind of razors to be honed!
Of course we did not sell soap and I asked Larsen why he had taken an order for it. His reply was:
"Look here, Boss, let's do it. He wanted it, and it'll please him. He then give us more trade."
"But what about the razor blades? We can't sharpen those here."