Frank waited for a moment, wondering if the butcher really meant to buy a book, or if he was only fooling.
“I have a family doctor book and one on cattle and poultry, and their diseases,” he went on, opening his case.
“Vot is dot?” The butcher stopped chopping meat and stared at him.
Frank repeated what he had said, and showed the books. The fat butcher commenced to laugh.
“I ton’t want me dose pooks,” he said. “I ton’t read English; I read Cherman. I dink me you got some plank pooks to sell. I vant a plank book to write down orders in. See, like dis,” and he held up a counter book.
He was so good-natured that Frank had to laugh with him. “I see,” he said and packed up his books again. “When I am selling blank books I’ll come around and see you.” He walked to the door, and then came back. “What do you pay for such a book as that?”
“Dwenty cents.”
“Could you use half a dozen of them if I got them for you?”
“Yah, I dake a dozen, den I got pooks enough for a long dimes.”
“All right, I’ll get you a dozen next week,” and Frank put the order on a blank sheet of paper he carried. At a wholesale stationer’s place in New York he had seen such books in the window at a dollar and a quarter a dozen. He knew he could send the money for them and have them shipped to him by freight at a cost of not more than twenty or thirty cents.