“Why don’t you sell books? You’d earn more money.”
“Sonny, let me tell you somethin’—keep away from books if you ever start peddlin’ on your own hook. Fur they hain’t no money in lit’ature. I’ve tried it, an’ I know what I’m talkin’ about.… Now git.”
“You didn’t find out very much,” I grinned at Scoop when we were outside.
“I found out all that I expected to find out,” he returned, satisfied. He looked back at the soap man, who was standing in the mill doorway. “A spy, all right. His face gave him away when I mentioned Mr. Ricks. Didn’t you notice, Jerry? And, just as Tom has suspected, he’s doing his spying on the brick house from the office windows.” There was a moment’s pause. “Book peddler—soap peddler—spy,” murmured Scoop. “A queer man and a crooked man. We’ve got to keep our eyes on him.”
That afternoon Tom stood guard in the brick house while the rest of us peddled soap, each on a different street. [[78]]
“How’s Red?” I inquired of Mrs. Meyers, when she had come to the front door of her house in response to my ring.
“We’re keeping him in bed. But he doesn’t seem to be very sick. So with plenty of pie and ice cream,” she joked, “we hope to pull him through.”
“Has he still got spots on his back?”
She nodded.
“What he needs,” I told her, as a quick-minded salesman, “is a cake of our beauty soap.”