“Good mornin',” said Thankful. It seemed to her high time that someone said something, and the little man had not opened his lips. He did not open them even now.
“Um,” he grunted, and that was all.
“Are you Mr. Solomon Cobb?” she asked. She knew now that he was; he had changed a great deal since she had last seen him, but his eyes had not changed, and he still had the habit she remembered, that of pulling at his whiskers in little, short tugs as if trying to pull them out. “Like a man hauling wild carrots out of a turnip patch,” she wrote Emily when describing the interview.
He did not answer the question. Instead, after another long look, he said:
“If you're sellin' books, I don't want none. Don't use 'em.”
This was so entirely unexpected that Mrs. Barnes was, for the moment, confused and taken aback.
“Books!” she repeated, wonderingly. “I didn't say anything about books. I asked you if you was Mr. Cobb.”
Another look. “If you're sellin' or peddlin' or agentin' or anything I don't want none,” said the little man. “I'm tellin' you now so's you can save your breath and mine. I've got all I want.”
Thankful looked at him and his surroundings. This ungracious and unlooked for reception began to have its effect upon her temper; as she wrote Emily in the letter, her “back fin began to rise.” It was on the tip of her tongue to say that, judging by appearances, he should want a good many things, politeness among others. But she did not say it.
“I ain't a peddler or a book agent,” she declared, crisply. “When I ask you to buy, seems to me 'twould be time enough to say no. If you're Solomon Cobb, and I know you are, I've come to see you on business.”