"Book agents! We can't do it, Miss Benedict. There are not three people in South Plains who ever think of buying a book. One of the creatures canvassed the whole town last summer; was in every house within three miles, and she sold just four books. A good book it was, too; but the people who had money to spare didn't want it, and the people who wanted it hadn't the money. I was never more sorry for anybody in my life than I was for that poor girl, who wore out a pair of shoes and a pair of gloves, and spoiled her bonnet, to say nothing of her temper. And she was voted the greatest nuisance we ever had in this village, and that is saying a great deal."
Miss Benedict laughed merrily. Ruth's voluble tongue always amused her.
"I don't mean books," she explained. "There are other things; for instance, hair-pins."
The sentence closed with a little laugh, and seemed to be suggested by the dropping of one of the gleaming things at that moment from her hair; but there was that in her voice which made the girls think there was a real suggestion hidden in it, though they could not see how.
"Hair-pins!" repeated Ruth, in puzzled tone.
"Yes: really and truly, not metaphorically. I bought some last night at the store in the village; the best, the clerk gravely assured me, that were to be had. Wretched things! I wore one for an hour, then threw it in the stove; it seemed to me that it pulled each hair of my head during that one hour. Look at the kind we ought to have!" Whereupon she drew the gleaming thing out again, and passed it around for minute scrutiny. "Blued steel, they are, you see; that is the trade mark; each one is finished to a high degree of smoothness. One who has used a single paper of them could not be persuaded to content herself with any other kind. Cheap they are, too. Actually cheaper than those instruments of torture I bought last night. I sent to my sister by the morning mail, to send me a box forthwith. That suggested the business to me, I presume. There are worthless imitations, but the genuine sort can be bought by the quantity very cheaply indeed, and a respectable profit might be made on them until the people were supplied. It isn't as though we were at work in a city, where women could supply themselves without any trouble. It is a work of genuine mercy, I think, to rescue the ladies from those prongs to which they have to submit."
"Turn hair-pin pedlers!" said Mary Burton. There was a laugh on her face, but the slightest upward curve to her pretty lip. Mary felt above the suggestion.
Her father was a farmer, decidedly well-to-do, and owned and lived in one of the prettiest places about South Plains.
"Yes," said the millionnaire's daughter, who had lived all her life in a palatial home such as Mary Burton could not even imagine, "pedlers, if you like the name; why not? It is a good, honest business, if one keeps good stock, and sells at honest prices.
"I like it very much better than selling cake, and flowers, and nuts, and candy, in the church, at wicked prices, in the name of benevolence."