“Samuel, you ought to have such a book,” put in the farmer’s wife. “Don’t you think so, Hiram?”
“Might be a good idee,” responded the son, who was about twenty years of age and six feet two inches in height. “Might be we wouldn’t hev lost thet cow last month if we’d known what was the matter of her.”
“Here is a chapter on cows,” said Frank, turning to it. “Here are the diseases, and here are the remedies.”
“By gum! That’s what was the matter o’ our cow!” exclaimed Hiram, looking into the book. “Here’s the medicine to give fer it, too. It’s too bad, pop, we didn’t have such a book when she tuk sick.”
“How much is a book like thet?” questioned the farmer, cautiously. “I can’t afford no fancy figure.”
“There is the price right on the front page,” answered Frank. “Three dollars, no more and no less, and the same price to all.”
The way he said this made the farmer’s son laugh.
“Reckon you’re a book agent right enough,” he observed. “Bet you kin talk like one of them patent medicine men as travels around, can’t you?”
“I can talk about these books, because I understand them.” He turned to the farmer’s wife. “It’s just like this pie. You know how to make it, and that’s why it’s good.”
She smiled broadly.