"I want to know! Then the hundreds of books in your house are about like money that's locked up in the safe instead o' bein' out at interest, or turnin' itself over in some other way, ain't they?"
"Quite so."
Caleb went into a brown study, and Philip and Grace chatted apart, and laughed—occasionally sighed—over what they had intended to buy and read, when they found themselves well off. Suddenly Caleb emerged from his brown study and said:—
"Ain't them books like a lot of clothes or food that's locked up, doin' no good to their owner, while other folks, round about, are hungry, or shiverin'?"
"Caleb," said Philip, after a long frown in which his wife did not join, although distinctly invited, "my practised eye discerns that you think our books, which are about as precious to us as so many children might be, ought to be lent out, to whoever would read them."
"Well, why not? Ev'rybody else in these parts that's got books lends 'em. Doc Taggess does it, the minister does it, an' a lot of others. The trouble is that a good many families has got the same books. Once in a while some book agent with head-piece enough to take his pay in truck has gone through this county like a cyclone—an' left about as much trash behind him as a cyclone usually does."
"Aha! And yet you'd have me believe that the people who have bought such trash would enjoy the books which my wife and I have been selecting with great care for years?"
"Can't tell till you give 'em the chance, as the darkey said when he was asked how many watermelons his family could tuck away. I don't s'pose you knowed there was the makin' of a first-class country merchant in you, did you, till you got the chance to try? Besides, as I reckon I've said before, you mustn't judge our people by their clothes. I don't b'lieve they average more fools to the thousan' than city folks."
"Neither do I, Caleb; but tastes differ, even among the wisest, and to risk my darling books among a lot of people who might think me a fool for my pains—oh, 'tis not to be thought of. Next, I suppose, you'll suggest that I take my pictures from the walls and lend them around, say a week to a family."